Peak Performance speakers

Why organisations work with Simon Hartley Nearly three decades inside elite sport, including Premier League football, the English Institute of Sport, Olympic teams and the Fijian rugby 7s programme, give him a working library of what world-class actually looks like in practice. He treats mindset and culture as engineered outcomes, not motivational ideas, with a published body of work (twelve books including Peak Performance Every Time and Stronger Together) that gives buyers a concrete intellectual product to point at. His client list crosses sectors that rarely share a stage, from Adidas, GE, Siemens, Sky, NatWest and The North Face to Bayer Leverkusen, FC Bayern Munich and Team GB, which makes the translation from sport to business credible rather than asserted. Founder of Be World Class and co-founder of Success Engineers, he runs a long-form consulting practice alongside the keynote work, so what audiences hear has been tested with the same leadership teams he later embeds with. Biography highlights Founder of Be World Class (2008) and co-founder of Success Engineers (2017). Former Consultant Sports Psychologist, English Institute of Sport; former Head of Sport Science, Sunderland AFC. Author of twelve books on performance, character, teams and hiring, including Peak Performance Every Time, Stronger Together and How to Develop Character. Worked with Olympic teams, Premier League clubs, Bundesliga sides (including Bayer Leverkusen and FC Bayern Munich), the Fijian rugby 7s programme, and Formula One. Corporate clients include Adidas, GE, Siemens, Sky, NatWest and The North Face. Featured in Personnel Today, Management Today, The Times and Bundesliga Weekly; on-screen consultant for the Fiji Time documentary series. Biography Elite sport offers a controlled study in performance. The conditions are public, the consequences are immediate, and the gap between teams that win consistently and teams that almost win is usually invisible to outsiders. Simon Hartley has spent close to thirty years inside that gap. He held senior roles at the English Institute of Sport and Sunderland AFC, worked across Premier League football, the Bundesliga, Olympic programmes and Formula One, and was part of the support team behind the Fijian rugby 7s side that became one of the most-watched sporting stories of recent years. In 2008 he founded Be World Class to apply what he had learned in those environments to organisations outside sport. The premise is straightforward. World-class performance is not a personality trait or a slogan. It is a set of habits, behaviours and cultural conditions that can be identified, taught and reinforced. His work for Adidas, GE, Siemens, Sky, NatWest, The North Face and others tests that premise against the practical questions senior leaders actually ask, about teams, hiring, character, and decision-making under load. Across twelve books, including Peak Performance Every Time, Stronger Together, How to Develop Character and Hire Great People, he has built a body of work that takes the language of elite sport and translates it into something a board or an executive committee can use. The books are short, deliberately, because they are written to be read by people who already have a day job. He has been featured in Personnel Today, Management Today, The Times and Bundesliga Weekly, and is a regular on-screen contributor to sports documentary work. The throughline in his speaking is a refusal to treat mindset as a soft topic. Resilience, character, team chemistry and culture are presented as variables that leaders can shape with the same discipline they apply to revenue and operations. That framing is why his audiences tend to leave with a checklist, not a feeling. Key speaking topics World-class team performance Winning mindset and mental toughness Resilience and performance under pressure Values-driven culture and leadership Hiring for character Sustaining high performance in volatile conditions Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive committees aiming to lift their performance ceiling, not their average CHROs and people leaders responsible for team performance, culture and hiring practice Sales and commercial leadership teams operating in high-pressure markets Conference audiences of senior leaders looking for substance behind the language of resilience and high performance Audience outcomes A clear distinction between good, great and world-class as operating standards, and what separates them in practice A working understanding of the behaviours and conditions that build resilient, high-performing teams Specific reference points from elite sport that translate to commercial settings, not analogies for their own sake A view of culture and mindset as engineered outcomes that leaders can influence directly Language and frameworks senior teams can take back into their own performance conversations

Why organisations work with Simon Keith A lived case study in decision-making when the cost of failure is absolute, drawn from two heart transplants, a kidney transplant and a return to professional sport. Member of the Order of Canada, awarded in 2022 for organ donation advocacy, signalling national-level credibility well beyond the speaker circuit. A second-act career as an operator who has built and sold companies and led turnarounds, which means the room hears the sporting story through a business lens. Author of Heart For The Game, with a foreword by Steve Nash, giving conference organisers a tangible artefact to put in delegates’ hands. A speaker who has addressed the White House Organ Summit, the Canadian Parliament and the British Parliament, which sets the calibre of the rooms he is comfortable holding. Biography highlights First professional athlete in the world to play after a heart transplant, following his 1986 surgery at Papworth Hospital under Sir Terence English. No. 1 overall pick in the Major Indoor Soccer League draft, selected by the Cleveland Crunch in 1989. Member of the Order of Canada (2022), for advocacy of organ donation and support for transplant recipients. Founder and CEO of the Simon Keith Foundation, supporting young transplant recipients returning to active life. Author of Heart For The Game: The Incredible Saga of Simon Keith (2012), co-written with Jason Cole and Don Yaeger, foreword by Steve Nash. Speaker at the inaugural White House Organ Summit (2016), and at both the Canadian and British Parliaments. Biography Most leaders will never face the moment Simon Keith faced at twenty-one. In July 1986, at Papworth Hospital outside London, he received the heart of a seventeen-year-old donor named Jonathan Edward. Three years later he was the No. 1 overall pick in the Major Indoor Soccer League draft, the first athlete in the world to play professional sport after a heart transplant. That single fact tends to dominate the room. What gives it commercial weight is what he did with the thirty-five years that followed. He played in the MISL with the Cleveland Crunch, retired into business, and built and sold companies across multiple industries. He has led turnarounds and run operating roles in healthcare and organ procurement, which is the world that gave him his life back. In March 2019, his body rejected the 1986 heart. He received a second heart transplant and a kidney transplant in San Diego, and returned to work. In December 2022, Governor General Mary Simon appointed him a Member of the Order of Canada for his advocacy of organ donation and for his support of transplant recipients through the Simon Keith Foundation, which he founded to fund young organ recipients returning to active life. On stage, the story carries the credentials. He is direct, unsentimental, and more interested in what an audience does on Monday morning than in how they felt on Friday afternoon. He works in two registers: the close, personal account of decision-making under existential pressure, and the operating perspective of someone who has run companies and knows what a leadership team is actually asking for when they ask for resilience. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under existential pressure Resilience and recovery after personal or professional shock High-performance leadership Team trust and culture Organ donation, transplantation and patient advocacy Business turnaround leadership Ideal for Executive leadership teams and senior leaders facing prolonged pressure or restructure High-performance sales, operations and field leadership conferences Healthcare, life sciences and medical device audiences Annual all-company kickoffs where the organisation is asking for composure, not just energy Audience outcomes A frame of reference for the difference between coping with pressure and leading through it A clearer view of what self-belief looks like as an operational discipline, not a slogan Renewed willingness to make decisions when the conditions are not yet stable A specific account of how a leader rebuilds after a setback the team has watched in real time

Why organisations work with Ben Ainslie The 2013 America’s Cup comeback – Oracle Team USA recovering from 8-1 down to win 9-8, with Ainslie as a late-joining tactician – is one of the most documented examples in sport of collective decision-making under existential, real-time pressure; he was inside it, not watching it. He has led the British America’s Cup team across four consecutive editions from founding to Louis Vuitton Cup victory, navigating a sponsor exit, a team restructure, and a PE-backed rebuild – the leadership challenges here sit closer to a turnaround CEO than a sporting champion. Where most elite sport speakers speak from an individual athlete’s perspective, Ainslie has built and led a 200-person high-performance organisation with institutional investors, commercial partners, and multi-year competitive strategy – his understanding of what performance culture requires at scale is operational. He founded BAR Technologies in 2016 to commercialise elite sailing engineering in commercial marine industries, demonstrating that his thinking about high-performance systems translates into product development and industrial innovation beyond competition. As founder of the 1851 Trust – which has engaged over 1.5 million young people globally in STEM and climate education – he has built long-term talent and education infrastructure alongside his competitive programme: a model directly relevant to organisations thinking about capability pipelines rather than just current performance. Biography highlights Four Olympic gold medals (Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, London 2012) and one silver (Atlanta 1996) across five consecutive Olympic Games Tactician for Oracle Team USA in the 2013 America’s Cup, contributing to one of sport’s most documented competitive comebacks: from 8-1 down to a 9-8 series win Founded the British America’s Cup team in 2012; led it – through successive iterations as Ben Ainslie Racing, INEOS Team UK, and INEOS Britannia – to win the 2024 Louis Vuitton Cup in Barcelona, Britain’s first America’s Cup match appearance in 60 years Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team (Athena Sports Group) won the 2025 SailGP Championship Founder, BAR Technologies (2016): maritime innovation company applying high-performance sailing engineering to commercial marine industry Founder, 1851 Trust (2014): sport-inspired STEM and climate education charity; Royal Patronage from HRH The Princess of Wales; over 1.5 million young people engaged globally Knighted for services to sailing; previously appointed MBE, OBE, and CBE; ISAF World Sailor of the Year four times (1998, 2002, 2008, 2012) Biography The 2013 America’s Cup in San Francisco produced one of the most compressed examples of collective decision-making under competitive pressure in the history of sport. Oracle Team USA, trailing 8-1 in a first-to-nine series, won eight consecutive races to take the Cup 9-8. Ben Ainslie joined as tactician mid-series and is recognised as a central figure in that turnaround. That moment belongs to a much longer record. Ainslie won medals across five consecutive Olympic Games between 1996 and 2012 – silver in Atlanta, then four consecutive golds across the Laser and Finn classes – establishing himself as the most successful Olympic sailor in history. What the record demonstrates is not simply exceptional individual talent, but the capacity to sustain competitive performance across two decades of changing conditions, equipment classes, and rivals. Since 2012, the same discipline has been applied to building organisations. The British America’s Cup team Ainslie founded – through successive iterations as Ben Ainslie Racing, INEOS Team UK, and INEOS Britannia – won the 2024 Louis Vuitton Cup in Barcelona, making it the first British team in 60 years to qualify for the America’s Cup match, and the first in 90 years to score points in the match itself. Alongside the racing programme, he founded BAR Technologies in 2016 to commercialise high-performance marine engineering, and the 1851 Trust in 2014, which has engaged over 1.5 million young people globally in STEM and climate education – both carrying Royal Patronage. For senior leaders, the combination is specific and current. Ainslie’s experience covers individual elite performance, real-time decision-making in competitive crises, multi-cycle team leadership, and the structural work of building and rebuilding high-performance organisations under financial and competitive pressure. The Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team, part of his Athena Sports Group, won the 2025 SailGP Championship – evidence that the performance culture he has built is still being tested, and still delivering. Key speaking topics High-performance team leadership across competitive cycles Decision-making under competitive pressure Organisational resilience and rebuilding after setback Elite team culture and identity Strategic risk in high-stakes environments Performance under sustained adversity Talent development and long-term performance pipeline Ideal for Senior leadership and C-suite teams navigating high-stakes competitive environments or post-setback rebuilds Chief People Officers and HR leadership focused on building durable, high-performance cultures rather than episodic peak performance Boards and executive committees managing structural transitions, sponsor or investor changes, or long-horizon competitive strategy Conferences focused on leadership excellence, organisational performance, and team culture Audience outcomes A concrete reference framework – drawn from five Olympic campaigns and four America’s Cup cycles – for what distinguishes teams built to perform once from teams built to perform repeatedly First-hand perspective on real-time collective decision-making under existential competitive pressure, with reference to the 2013 America’s Cup comeback A clearer understanding of what high-performance culture requires at the systemic level – identity, accountability, recruitment, and succession – rather than in peak-moment inspiration Practical reference points from building, losing, and rebuilding a 200-person elite organisation across multiple competitive and commercial cycles A perspective on running performance culture and innovation infrastructure in parallel, drawn from Athena Sports Group, BAR Technologies, and the 1851 Trust

Why organisations work with Sol Campbell One of a small group of footballers to have captained England and won a Premier League title undefeated, a credential that lands with audiences across generations and geographies. Speaks first-hand on what it costs to perform when public sentiment turns against you, drawn from a controversial 2001 free transfer between rival clubs and a 20-year career under tabloid scrutiny. Brings a distinct perspective on race, representation and institutional barriers in sport, grounded in his Westminster “Rainbow Lecture” on racism in football and his Lifetime Achievement Award from Sporting Equals. Adds gravitas and recognition to leadership, DEI and after-dinner programmes where audiences value an authentic voice from elite professional sport over a bureau-trained motivational template. Biography highlights 73 England caps; the only player to represent England at six consecutive major tournaments (1996-2006). Five seasons at Arsenal: two Premier League titles, three FA Cups, and a starting role in the 2003-04 “Invincibles” unbeaten league campaign. 503 Premier League appearances across Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Portsmouth and Newcastle, placing him among the top fifteen on the all-time list. Captained Tottenham to the 1999 League Cup and Portsmouth to the 2008 FA Cup; PFA Team of the Year selections in 1999, 2003 and 2004. Subject of “Sol Campbell: The Authorised Biography” by Simon Astaire (2014), which addressed racism, identity and the cost of a public career. Managerial spells at Macclesfield Town and Southend United, and a 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award from race equality charity Sporting Equals. Biography Few defenders of the Premier League era carried as much public weight as Sol Campbell. The 2001 transfer from Tottenham to Arsenal was one of the most contested moves in English football, and it framed a career played out under unusual scrutiny. What followed was two Premier League titles, three FA Cups, and a starting place in the Arsenal side that went a full league season unbeaten in 2003-04. For England he won 73 caps and is the only player to have represented the country at six consecutive major tournaments. He captained the side at 23, an early test of composure against the public expectation that comes with the armband. The arc of his playing career, 503 Premier League appearances and a captaincy at three clubs, gives him a long-form view of what holds a team together when pressure persists. Off the pitch, Campbell has been one of the more direct voices on race and institutional barriers inside English football. He used his authorised biography by Simon Astaire to address the question publicly, delivered a “Rainbow Lecture” at Westminster on racism in the game, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Sporting Equals in 2023. His managerial experience at Macclesfield and Southend, both clubs in financial difficulty, gave him a second perspective on leadership inside organisations under structural strain. For corporate audiences he is a recognisable figure who can speak credibly on leadership identity, the discipline of high-performance teams, and the personal experience of being a senior figure under sustained external pressure. His value is in the specifics of what that career actually demanded, told without varnish. Key speaking topics Leadership under public pressure Captaincy and team identity in elite sport High-performance culture Race, representation and institutional barriers in sport Resilience across a long professional career Personal identity in a public life Ideal for Corporate leadership conferences and senior team off-sites DEI, race equity and employee resource group programmes After-dinner and award-ceremony audiences in finance, professional services and sport Sponsor activations and brand events tied to football and elite sport Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what captaincy and high-performance standards look like when held over a 20-year career. A direct perspective on race and representation in a professional environment, from someone who has spoken publicly about it for over a decade. Specific examples of how senior figures hold composure when public sentiment moves against them. Recognition value: a household-name speaker whose presence anchors a flagship event for audiences that follow English football.

Why organisations work with Sophie Carrigill Her sports psychology credentials (first-class degree from the University of Worcester and an MSc from Sheffield Hallam) mean she can explain what high-performance teams actually do under pressure, not just illustrate it with personal stories. That distinction matters when leaders are making structural decisions, not looking for inspiration. She captained the GB women’s wheelchair basketball squad for four consecutive years, and was the first captain to lead the team through a centralised programme and a full relocation. The leadership challenge she navigated is directly analogous to what organisations face in transformation: maintaining accountability, cohesion and performance through structural disruption. Forbes named her on its 30 Under 30 Europe list for Sports and Games in 2021 specifically for her sporting achievements alongside her work advancing inclusion; a recognition that positions her as a practitioner of inclusion, not a spokesperson for it. Her ten-year international career – across six European Championships, three World Championships, and three Paralympic Games – gives her a perspective on sustained performance that is qualitatively different from speakers whose credibility rests on a single defining event. She does not separate the inclusion argument from the performance argument. Organisations that have struggled to make either case benefit from an approach where both are argued from the same evidence base. Biography highlights Three-time Paralympian, representing Great Britain at Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 World Championship silver medallist (2018, Hamburg) and six-time European Championship competitor, with bronze medals (2013, 2015, 2017) and silver medals (2019, 2021, 2023) U25 World Championship gold medallist (2015, Beijing) Named on Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list, Sports and Games category (2021), recognising sporting achievement and inclusion work First-class honours degree in Sports Psychology, University of Worcester; MSc in Sport and Exercise Psychology, Sheffield Hallam University Captain of the GB women’s wheelchair basketball squad for four consecutive years; first captain to lead the team through a centralised programme and squad relocation Women’s Sport Trust Unlocked programme contributor (2021–2023) Biography High-performance culture and genuine inclusion are managed as separate agendas in most organisations. Resolving that tension – rather than attempting to manage it – is what separates leadership teams that perform under genuine pressure from those that perform only when conditions are stable. Sophie Carrigill has been at the heart of the GB women’s wheelchair basketball programme for over a decade. A three-time Paralympian across Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, she captained the squad for four consecutive years, becoming the first captain to lead the team through a centralised programme and a full relocation to Sheffield. The 2018 World Championship silver medal, three European bronzes, three European silvers, and a U25 World gold came from a team built under conditions of continuous structural change. The leadership test was not exceptional circumstances; it was the job. Her academic formation distinguishes her from speakers with comparable competitive records. A first-class honours degree in Sports Psychology from the University of Worcester, followed by an MSc in Sport and Exercise Psychology at Sheffield Hallam, equips her to explain the mechanisms behind elite performance, rather than to simply describe what it felt like. Forbes recognised that combination in 2021, placing her on its 30 Under 30 Europe list for Sports and Games for her record on court and her work advancing inclusion in sport. Off the court, she has contributed to the Women’s Sport Trust Unlocked programme and worked at Whisper, a sports and entertainment media production company. In a board or leadership team conversation about resilience, inclusion, or sustained performance under pressure, she does not present three separate cases. She presents one. Key speaking topics Resilience and performance under pressure Leadership through structural change Disability inclusion as competitive advantage High-performance team culture Sports psychology and elite mindset Sustained performance across long competitive cycles Identity, adversity and recovery Ideal for Senior leadership and executive teams examining the relationship between culture, inclusion and performance CHROs and people leaders building inclusion strategies that are anchored in performance outcomes, not compliance frameworks Organisations in transformation or restructuring, where team cohesion and leadership accountability are under active pressure DEI conference audiences seeking a performance-led argument for inclusion rather than a values-led one Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of resilience, as a practised, structural discipline rather than an individual personality trait Concrete examples of how inclusion decisions affect team performance at elite level, drawn from a decade of Paralympic competition A direct challenge to the assumption that high performance and genuine diversity are competing priorities Practical insight into how accountability operates in teams under structural change, including relocation, new systems and shifting leadership A model for sustaining performance across long cycles, not just optimising for peak moments

Why organisations work with Stef Reid A medal record, not a metaphor: triple Paralympic medallist, 2017 long jump world champion and five-time world record holder, with 18 years of evidence on what holds performance together when conditions change. Sharp specificity on the moment after the plan fails. Her material is built around what teams actually do in the hours and weeks after a setback, not the rhetoric of bouncing back. A working argument on inclusion that does not collapse into compliance language. Reid speaks about disability and difference as performance variables, drawing on her TEDxLondonWomen talk on accessible design and her public campaign that pushed Nike on single-shoe retail for amputee customers. Boardroom credibility built outside the speaking circuit: Vice President of British Athletics, broadcaster for Channel 4 and the BBC, MBE for services to Paralympic sport. Clients including BP, Sky, Bloomberg, Visa, McLaren, Barclays and Procter & Gamble, where the brief was leadership under pressure, not an inspirational set piece. Biography highlights Triple Paralympic medallist (Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016) and 2017 World Para Athletics long jump champion. MBE, 2018 New Year Honours, for services to Paralympic sport. Biochemistry graduate, Queen’s University, Kingston, on a full academic scholarship. Vice President of British Athletics and The Leprosy Mission UK; ambassador for London Air Ambulance and British Ice Skating. Broadcaster across Channel 4, BBC and CBC, including the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, the Invictus Games and the 2025 World Athletics Championships; Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Sports Host. TEDxLondonWomen speaker on accessible design; first British amputee to walk a London Fashion Week catwalk. Biography A boating accident at fifteen ended one version of Reid’s life and made the next one a question of design rather than recovery. The medical answer was amputation. The harder question, asked over the eighteen years that followed, was how to build a system, training, mindset, team, that turned a body operating under new constraints into one capable of winning at the highest level of world sport. She did. Three Paralympic medals across Beijing, London and Rio. A world long jump title in 2017. Five world records. An MBE in 2018 for services to Paralympic sport. The proof points sit on a single shelf, but the content she now brings to senior audiences sits underneath them, in the specific habits and decisions that allowed an athlete to keep performing through injury, classification changes and the routine collapse of plans. That material translates because organisations face the same problem in a different vocabulary. Reid works with leadership teams on the practical question of what high-performing groups actually do in the moment a strategy stops describing reality. Her talks for BP, Sky, Bloomberg, Visa, McLaren, Barclays and Procter & Gamble take the same arc, with frameworks built from elite sport science and her own career, not from generic motivational structure. The second strand of her work is inclusion as a performance question. Her TEDxLondonWomen talk argued that accessible design serves everyone, not a category. Her public campaign pressing Nike to sell single shoes to amputee customers made the same point in retail terms. As a broadcaster for Channel 4, the BBC and CBC, and as Vice President of British Athletics, she carries that argument into rooms where DEI language has otherwise lost its edge. Key speaking topics Adaptive mindset and team performance under pressure Resilience and recovery after setback High performance habits in elite sport and business Inclusion and disability as performance variables Mental health and sustained excellence Diversity as a competitive lever, not a compliance line Ideal for Senior leadership teams entering restructure, integration or a period of sustained pressure DEI, talent and culture leads briefing the board on inclusion as capability rather than reporting High-performing commercial, sales and trading teams operating under volatility Sales kick-offs, leadership offsites and all-hands moments where the audience needs a credible voice on adapting when the plan stops working Audience outcomes A clearer view of what a team’s actual response to setback says about its performance ceiling Practical habits drawn from elite-sport preparation that translate to operating decisions under pressure A sharper, less political vocabulary for inclusion that frames difference as a performance variable Renewed conviction at senior level that adaptive capacity is a leadership skill, not a personality trait

Why organisations work with Stephanie Decker A first-person account of decision-making under conditions most leaders will never face, told without the polish of a manufactured story arc. A speaker whose post-event work, including testimony before the Kentucky Senate on prosthetic insurance reform and a foundation supporting child amputees, gives the keynote a verifiable second act beyond the survival narrative. National media recognition from ABC World News, Today, USA Today and People Magazine, alongside L’Oreal Paris 2014 Women of Worth honouree status, that travels with the booking. A message tuned to audiences carrying personal weight: cancer advocacy networks, senior management teams in pressured industries, sales teams running long campaigns. Biography highlights Survived an EF4 tornado in Henryville, Indiana on 2 March 2012, shielding her two children from collapsing debris; both legs subsequently amputated. Founder of the Stephanie Decker Foundation, established 2012, supporting child amputees with access to prosthetics and competitive sports. Named one of L’Oreal Paris 2014 Women of Worth honourees, selected from over 4,000 applicants. Awarded Daily Point of Light Award #5433 in March 2015. Testified before the Kentucky Senate in 2013 advocating for state-level prosthetic insurance reform. Featured nationally on ABC World News Tonight as Person of the Week with Diane Sawyer, The Today Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, USA Today, USA Weekend and People Magazine. Biography On 2 March 2012, an EF4 tornado destroyed a house in Henryville, Indiana. Stephanie Decker was inside, holding two children against her body while the structure collapsed. The children walked out without serious injury. Decker did not. Both of her legs were amputated. What followed is the part that matters for an audience. Within months of the event she founded the Stephanie Decker Foundation, focused on two narrow, concrete missions: access to competitive sports for children with prosthetics, and access to current prosthetic technology for those whose insurance does not cover it. In 2013, she testified before the Kentucky Senate in support of state-level reform on prosthetic coverage. In 2014, she was named one of ten L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth honourees, selected from more than four thousand applicants. In 2015, Points of Light recognised her with Daily Point of Light Award #5433. The keynote works because the speaker has done the thing she is talking about, and because she did not stop after the story ended. Audiences hearing the survival account are also hearing from someone who built and ran a national advocacy effort while learning to walk again. That is the substance behind the resilience claim. The relevance to a corporate audience is narrower than her bureau billing sometimes suggests. Decker is not a leadership theorist or a workplace researcher. What she offers is a specific reference point for composure under pressure that personal, that immediate, and that consequential, delivered by someone whose subsequent decade of work supports the message. Key speaking topics Resilience after sudden personal crisis Decision-making under extreme pressure Building advocacy organisations from personal experience Recovery and reinvention after life-altering injury Personal agency and adaptive mindset Family, courage and protective instinct Ideal for Sales conferences and annual kick-offs where audiences need an emotional and credible reset Cancer advocacy networks, healthcare communities, and patient-facing organisations Senior management teams in high-pressure industries looking for a non-business-framework keynote Charitable, women’s leadership and community-impact events Audience outcomes A concrete first-person reference point for composure and decision-making under extreme conditions A model of how a personal event can be translated into sustained advocacy and institutional change Renewed personal perspective on what counts as a meaningful obstacle at work A specific case for the connection between recovery and purpose

Why organisations work with Steve Gutzler Translates emotional intelligence research into specific behaviours senior leaders can run inside high-stakes meetings, escalations, and team conversations. Coaches at the operator level. His client list (Microsoft, Boeing, Cisco, Spotify, Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, U.S. Department of Commerce) is built around enterprise leadership development, not after-dinner motivation. Author of Splash and co-author of Lead With No Fear, two books that give a sponsor team a defensible body of work to point to when justifying the investment internally. Bring a coaching, not lecturing, posture into the room. Useful when the audience is senior enough to resent generic frameworks and wants to leave with something they will actually use on Monday. Biography highlights President of Leadership Quest, a leadership development and executive coaching firm. Author of Splash: The Ten Remarkable Traits to Build Momentum in Life and Leadership. Co-author of Lead With No Fear with Mike Acker, a 90-day leader-shift workbook with a companion edition. Creator of the Life and Leadership Journal, a 52-week guided self-reflection tool used in his coaching engagements. Keynote and coaching client roster includes Microsoft, Boeing, Cisco, Spotify, Starbucks, Seattle Seahawks, Ritz-Carlton, Starwood Hotels, Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, Marriott, U.S. Department of Commerce. Recent keynote platforms include the 2024 BNI Global Convention and the ECHL 2024 league meetings. Biography Most leadership programmes still teach influence as an intellectual problem. The hard part for senior leaders is rarely the analysis. It is the half-second after a difficult question, the tone of the next email, the look on the face when the quarterly numbers slip. Emotional intelligence is the discipline that decides those moments, and it is the discipline most leadership curricula skip. Leadership Quest, the firm Gutzler runs, exists to close that gap. The work draws on neuroscience-grounded emotional intelligence research and translates it into observable behaviour for executives operating under pressure. It is built for leaders who are already capable on paper and need the next layer of self-management, presence, and team effect. His writing reinforces the same argument. Splash sets out the everyday leadership traits that compound into team momentum. Lead With No Fear, co-authored with Mike Acker, walks leaders through a structured 90-day shift away from worry, insecurity, and self-doubt toward clarity and confidence. Both books are practical rather than theoretical, and both are used as backbone material in his coaching engagements. The client roster reads as a working list of organisations that buy leadership development seriously: Microsoft, Boeing, Cisco, Spotify, Starbucks, the Ritz-Carlton group, the Seattle Seahawks, the U.S. Department of Commerce. The pattern across them is consistent. They are buying a coach who can stand in front of a senior audience, name what is actually difficult about leadership, and leave the room with leaders behaving differently the same week. Key speaking topics Emotional intelligence for senior leaders Executive presence and influence Leadership performance under pressure Human-centered leadership High-performance teams Stress, composure and emotional agility Personal leadership and accountability Ideal for Heads of leadership development and L&D sponsors building EI into senior leadership curricula. CHROs and Chief People Officers running executive offsites and high-potential programmes. Business unit leaders and CEOs whose senior teams are technically strong but stretched on composure, presence, and team effect. Sales, customer-facing and front-line leadership populations where interaction quality drives commercial outcomes. Audience outcomes A working definition of emotional intelligence as a performance variable, with named behaviours that leaders can identify in themselves and their teams. Specific habits for managing reactivity, tone and presence in high-stakes interactions. A clearer view of how stress and self-management show up in team output, retention and trust. Language to use with direct reports about emotional regulation without making it feel like therapy. A simple structure (drawn from Splash and Lead With No Fear) for sustaining the change after the keynote.

Why organisations work with Steve Peters A clinical psychiatrist’s model of how the mind actually behaves under stress, not a coaching framework borrowed from adjacent fields. The Chimp Model has been pressure-tested with British Cycling, Sky ProCycling, Liverpool FC and more than twenty Olympic and national sports programmes, where the cost of a wrong decision is immediate and public. Author of The Chimp Paradox, with over 1.4 million copies sold, plus three further books extending the model into resilience, child development and daily practice. Equips leaders with a shared vocabulary for emotional regulation that travels into the executive team and downward through the organisation, not a one-off motivational hit. Senior academic standing at Sheffield Medical School and Expert Advisor status with the World Anti-Doping Agency anchor the work in formal medicine and ethics, not pop psychology. Biography highlights Consultant psychiatrist and CEO of Chimp Management Ltd. Undergraduate Dean and Senior Clinical Lecturer, Sheffield University Medical School, since 1994. Former Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, Rampton High Security Hospital. Author of The Chimp Paradox (Vermilion, 2012), My Hidden Chimp, The Silent Guides and A Path Through the Jungle. Consultant to British Cycling, Sky ProCycling, Liverpool FC, GB Taekwondo, England Rugby, England Football, British Swimming and UK Track and Field. Expert Advisor to the World Anti-Doping Agency; long-serving examination panellist for the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Biography The most expensive moments in a leader’s career are the ones where the emotional brain takes over and the rational mind catches up too late. The reaction in the meeting, the email sent at midnight, the call made under fatigue. These are not character flaws. They are predictable outputs of how the human mind is structured. Steve Peters spent more than two decades as a consultant psychiatrist before that observation became a model. His Chimp Model, set out in The Chimp Paradox, separates the emotional system of the brain from the rational one and gives people a working vocabulary for managing the gap between them. The book has sold more than 1.4 million copies and remains a fixture on UK self-development lists more than a decade after publication. The model earned its reputation in elite sport. Peters worked with British Cycling through its dominant Olympic period, with Sky ProCycling at the top of professional road racing, and with Liverpool FC, GB Taekwondo, England Rugby and England Football. Athletes including Sir Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton, Ronnie O’Sullivan and Adam Peaty have credited him by name. The point is not the celebrity roster. It is that the model has been used in environments where a single emotional misfire is captured on camera and replayed millions of times. His standing in the formal medical world gives the work a different weight from most performance content. Peters is Undergraduate Dean and Senior Clinical Lecturer at Sheffield University Medical School, was Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist at Rampton High Security Hospital, and serves as an Expert Advisor to the World Anti-Doping Agency. Leaders come away with something rare in this category: a clinically anchored model of their own mind that they can still use the morning after the keynote. Key speaking topics Mind management and the Chimp Model Emotional regulation under pressure Resilience and psychological robustness High performance under scrutiny Self-leadership for senior executives Mental health in the workplace Team dynamics and interpersonal conflict Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and boards facing high-stakes decision-making cycles CHROs and Heads of Talent commissioning substantive wellbeing and resilience programmes Leadership development directors building executive presence in newly senior leaders Sales, trading and operating teams whose performance is shaped by composure under pressure Audience outcomes A working model of how the emotional mind behaves under pressure, in a vocabulary that survives Monday morning A method for separating impulsive reactions from considered decisions in the moment Specific tools for managing fear, conflict, fatigue and post-event recovery A shared organisational language that makes mental performance discussable rather than private Confidence that the content is grounded in clinical psychiatry, not motivational reframing

Why organisations work with Steven Gerrard Few speakers have lifted a European trophy from 3-0 down at half-time. Gerrard captained the Liverpool side that came back against AC Milan in Istanbul in 2005, and he can talk about that 15-minute interval with first-person authority rather than retrospection. A 17-year single-club playing career and 710 appearances at Liverpool give him a credible voice on what it actually takes to maintain standards inside one organisation through multiple managers, regimes, and crises. He has sat on both sides of the leadership relationship, as captain accountable to a manager and as manager accountable for a squad, including a title-winning, unbeaten Scottish Premiership season at Rangers and Premier League management at Aston Villa. Honours from credible bodies, including the FWA Footballer of the Year, PFA Players’ Player of the Year, UEFA Club Footballer of the Year, and an MBE for services to sport, anchor the profile beyond celebrity. Biography highlights 710 appearances and 186 goals for Liverpool FC, 1998 to 2015, the club’s longest-serving modern captain. Captained Liverpool to the 2005 UEFA Champions League, the 2001 UEFA Cup, two FA Cups, and three League Cups. 114 England caps, 21 international goals, 38 matches as national team captain across three World Cups. PFA Players’ Player of the Year (2006), FWA Footballer of the Year (2009), UEFA Club Footballer of the Year (2005), Ballon d’Or bronze (2005). Manager of Rangers (2018-2021), winning the Scottish Premiership unbeaten in 2020-21; PFA Scotland and SFWA Manager of the Year. Manager of Aston Villa in the Premier League and subsequently Al-Ettifaq in the Saudi Pro League; MBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. Biography The 2005 Champions League final was lost at half-time. Liverpool were 3-0 down to AC Milan in Istanbul, the dressing room had visibly stopped believing, and the captain had six minutes of injury time and an interval to change the outcome of the match. Steven Gerrard scored the opening goal of the comeback, and Liverpool lifted the trophy. That night is now a standard reference for organisational recovery under pressure, and it is one of the few leadership moments senior buyers can name in advance of the keynote. The deeper credential is duration. Gerrard played 710 games for one club across 17 years, captaining Liverpool through four managers and several rebuilds. He won the UEFA Cup, the FA Cup, the League Cup, and the Champions League, earned 114 England caps, captained the national side 38 times, and was named PFA Players’ Player of the Year in 2006 and FWA Footballer of the Year in 2009. The MBE in the 2007 New Year Honours followed the Istanbul final. Management gave him the other side of the conversation. At Rangers, he won the 2020-21 Scottish Premiership unbeaten, the club’s first title in a decade, and was named Manager of the Year by both PFA Scotland and the SFWA. He then took on Aston Villa in the Premier League and Al-Ettifaq in the Saudi Pro League. The trajectory matters because it includes the difficult middle: he can speak from inside a Premier League dismissal as well as from inside a trophy lift. For senior audiences, the value is the specificity of the recall. Gerrard talks about the half-time team-talk, the second-leg comeback, the quiet conversation with a fading senior player, the months of managing a dressing room that has stopped winning. Two autobiographies, Gerrard: My Autobiography (2006) and My Story (2015), give the public record. The keynote gives the operational details behind it. Key speaking topics Leadership under maximum pressure Captaincy and team standards in elite performance High-performance culture inside long-tenure organisations Recovery from setback and second-half mentality The transition from senior individual contributor to manager Accountability between the leader and the team Sustained excellence across changing regimes Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and sales kick-offs in performance-driven organisations. Boards, executive committees, and CEO roundtables are interested in leadership lessons from elite sport. After-dinner audiences at corporate conferences and partner events. The sports industry, broadcasting, and sponsor-led events focused on football. Audience outcomes A first-person account of the half-time interval at Istanbul 2005 and what was actually said and decided. Concrete examples of what captaincy looks like across a 17-year tenure at one club. A view of leadership from both sides, the captain answering to the manager and the manager answering for the squad. Material on holding standards when results turn, drawn from Premier League and international experience. A frank account of management at Rangers, Aston Villa, and Al-Ettifaq, including what worked and what did not.

Why organisations work with Steven Laureys He brings the working brain into board-level conversations on performance and wellbeing, grounded in clinical neurology rather than wellness orthodoxy. He runs one of the few research groups in the world studying consciousness across coma, anaesthesia, sleep, hypnosis, and meditation, which gives audiences a single coherent framework for thinking about attention and recovery. His Francqui Prize and Canada Excellence Research Chair give a buyer hard evidence of scientific standing in a field crowded with popularisers. He has translated his research into a bestselling popular book on meditation, so audiences get a scientist who can talk to non-scientists without losing accuracy. He works in English, French, and Dutch, which makes him directly usable across European leadership audiences without an interpreter. Biography highlights Founder and head of the Coma Science Group, GIGA Consciousness, University of Liège. Canada Excellence Research Chair in Neuroplasticity, Laval University and CERVO Brain Research Centre. Research Director at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS). Winner of the Francqui Prize 2017 and the Generet Prize 2019. Author of The No-Nonsense Meditation Book, an international bestseller published by Bloomsbury and translated into multiple languages. TEDx speaker at TEDxBrussels and TEDxLiège, with research featured across major international media. Biography Most of what is sold to organisations as “wellbeing” is built on intuition. The brain that is meant to be helping is the most expensive and least understood asset on the payroll. Steven Laureys studies the brain for a living, and his work has spent two decades pushing the boundary of what can be measured in coma, sleep, anaesthesia, hypnosis, and meditation. He founded the Coma Science Group within GIGA Consciousness at the University of Liège in 2014, and now also holds the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Neuroplasticity at Laval University, based at the CERVO Brain Research Centre. He is a Research Director at Belgium’s FNRS and a clinical professor of neurology, board-certified in neurology and in palliative medicine. The Francqui Prize, Belgium’s highest scientific honour, was awarded to him in 2017 for his work on disorders of consciousness. His public reach is unusual for a clinician of this seniority. The No-Nonsense Meditation Book, published by Bloomsbury, became an international bestseller and made the case for meditation in the language of neuroimaging rather than spirituality. He has spoken at TEDxBrussels and TEDxLiège, and his research has been picked up across mainstream international media. For corporate audiences, he turns the same instruments he uses on coma patients and Buddhist monks toward the working brain: attention, stress, sleep, cognitive recovery, and the conditions under which people make good decisions. The argument he brings is simple. The science is now specific enough to act on, and most organisations are not yet using it. Key speaking topics Neuroscience of attention and focus Stress and cognitive recovery Sleep and performance Meditation and the brain Mental wellbeing in the workplace Human intelligence and artificial intelligence Consciousness, anaesthesia, and altered states Neuroplasticity and lifestyle interventions Ideal for CHROs and chief wellbeing officers are building credible mental health and performance programmes. Executive teams and boards are considering attention, sleep, and stress as performance variables. Leadership development audiences in healthcare, professional services, and high-stakes operating environments. Innovation and R&D leaders interested in the brain science behind creativity and cognitive load. Audience outcomes A clinician’s view of what neuroscience can and cannot yet say about attention, stress, sleep, and meditation. Specific, evidence-based practices that senior people can use on themselves and inside their teams. A clearer line between credible neuroscience and the wellness industry’s claims. Confidence to challenge wellbeing programmes that rest on intuition rather than evidence. A working mental model of the brain under load that maps onto real organisational decisions.

Why organisations work with Steven MacGregor He has built a single, named methodology, the Sustaining Executive Performance programme, and tested it on more than 20,000 executives in person across markets ranging from Peru to Qatar. The Chief Wellbeing Officer platform gives senior teams an operating model for sustaining leadership performance under pressure, delivered inside Google, Salesforce, Uber, Accenture, Santander, and Oracle. He founded the General Counsel Wellbeing Network, a global peer network for senior in-house counsel partnered with Pinsent Masons and shortlisted for Mental Health & Wellbeing Initiative of the Year at the Legal 500 ESG Awards 2026, evidence the platform holds up in one of the highest-pressure leadership populations. A decade-long trilogy, Sustaining Executive Performance (Pearson, 2015), Chief Wellbeing Officer (LID, 2018), and The Daily Reset (2024), gives him a coherent body of work that connects performance science, organisational design, and behavioural change. He sits inside McKinsey’s People and Organizational Performance practice as a Senior Advisor, so the work is calibrated to how serious operating companies actually run. Biography highlights Founder, Chief Wellbeing Officer (CWO) leadership development platform, delivered to executive teams at Google, Salesforce, Uber, Accenture, Santander, and Oracle Founder, General Counsel Wellbeing Network, a global peer network for senior in-house counsel with chapters across the UK, Spain, Ireland, and the Middle East Founder and CEO, Leadership Academy of Barcelona (LAB) Senior Advisor, People and Organizational Performance practice, McKinsey & Company Honorary Professor of Health and Wellbeing, Glasgow School of Art Faculty experience at IESE, IE Business School, IMD (Lausanne and Singapore), and CEIBS (Shanghai and Jakarta) Author of Sustaining Executive Performance (Pearson, 2015), Chief Wellbeing Officer (LID, 2018, with Rory Simpson), and The Daily Reset (2024) Biography Most senior leaders today are running a workload their predecessors would not recognise. Decision volume has compounded, recovery time has collapsed, and the pressure is no longer episodic. The harder question is what organisations actually invest in to make that sustainable. That is the line of work Steven MacGregor has spent two decades building, first inside business schools, then through the Leadership Academy of Barcelona, and now through the Chief Wellbeing Officer platform and as a Senior Advisor inside McKinsey’s People and Organizational Performance practice. The Sustaining Executive Performance programme started as an applied research project drawing on elite sport, including time with FC Barcelona’s athletics team, and elements of human-centred design. It has since been delivered to more than 20,000 executives in person, from Peru to Qatar. Today the Chief Wellbeing Officer platform sits on top of that foundation, and is delivered inside executive teams at Google, Salesforce, Uber, Accenture, Santander, and Oracle, with teaching at IESE, IE, IMD, CEIBS, and the Glasgow School of Art. The decade-long trilogy gives the work its intellectual spine. Sustaining Executive Performance (Pearson, 2015) set out the evidence-based link between wellbeing and decision-making, clarity, and long-term execution. Chief Wellbeing Officer (LID, 2018), written with former Telefónica Chief Learning Officer Rory Simpson, formalised the argument that wellbeing needs an owner at the top table, with metrics, budget, and authority. The Daily Reset (2024) translates behavioural science and habit formation into the everyday practices that make performance stick. The General Counsel Wellbeing Network, which MacGregor founded in 2024, is where the platform meets one of the most pressured leadership populations in business. It now operates across the UK, Spain, Ireland, and the Middle East, with a partnership with Pinsent Masons and a Legal 500 ESG Awards 2026 shortlisting for Mental Health & Wellbeing Initiative of the Year. His training is unusual for the field: a doctorate in engineering design management with research periods at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon, and an Honorary Professorship at the Glasgow School of Art. That background shapes the work. The focus is less on motivation and more on the design of work itself, which is what makes the material useful to senior teams trying to convert wellbeing language into operating change. Key speaking topics Sustainable leadership performance under pressure Executive resilience, clarity, and recovery Workplace wellbeing as an operating discipline The Chief Wellbeing Officer platform Personal energy and recovery for senior leaders Health, performance, and the design of work Behaviour change inside corporate environments Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and Chief Wellbeing Officers building enterprise-wide leadership performance and wellbeing strategies Executive committees and boards reviewing burnout, attrition, and human-capital risk General Counsel, Chief Legal Officers, and senior in-house counsel managing performance under chronic load Partner groups in professional services and law firms managing performance under chronic load Audience outcomes A working definition of what wellbeing means as a leadership performance discipline, not a benefit category The Sustaining Executive Performance framework as a concrete tool for senior leaders to apply to themselves and their teams A view on where the Chief Wellbeing Officer function sits in an operating model, with named accountabilities Practical habit-formation tools drawn from elite sport, behavioural science, and design that senior leaders can adopt in their own week