Peak Performance

Why organisations work with Natalie Turner A trained journalist’s foundation behind the broadcast work. First-class honours degree in journalism, freelance bylines in Men’s Health and Oxford Mail, and on-camera presenting credits with Disruptive Live and TRT World. Subject-matter comfort in tech and corporate environments. Disruptive Live is a London production studio whose clients include Lenovo, NetApp, TD SYNNEX and SnapLogic. Her presenting work there means an MC who can handle enterprise software and cybersecurity content without freezing when a CTO drifts off-script. The rare mix of presence and graft. Gloucestershire Media School hired her to interview actor and writer Jessica Hynes for their flagship event. The producer praised her as “a confident presenter with presence and charm” who was also willing to “put in the graft as a researcher and fixer.” Hosts who lift a programme tend to look like that. Earned authority in fitness and wellbeing content. British Military Fitness instructor, qualified personal trainer, competitive strongwoman, and former bodybuilder. When the brief turns to physical performance and resilience, the material comes from competitions she has actually entered, which audiences notice. Biography highlights Live event host and TV presenter with credits at Disruptive Live, the London-based video production and live streaming studio for technology brands Regular guest contributor on TRT World current affairs programming First-class honours degree in journalism Freelance journalism for Men’s Health and Oxford Mail British Military Fitness instructor and qualified personal trainer Competitive strongwoman, former bodybuilder, and organiser of a Help for Heroes charity strongwoman and strongman event at DW Fitness Cheltenham Biography Live events fail in predictable ways. The moderator loses tempo somewhere in the second half, and a room that started warm never quite comes back. Hosting is its own discipline, and a weak host can sink an otherwise strong programme. This is the work Natalie Turner has spent her career learning. A first-class honours graduate in journalism, she trained as a reporter before moving into live presenting. Her work for Disruptive Live, the London production studio whose technology-sector clients include Lenovo, NetApp, TD SYNNEX and SnapLogic, has put her in front of cybersecurity panels and channel-partner summits where the host has to hold technical content under live conditions. Freelance bylines for Men’s Health and Oxford Mail give the broadcast work a reporter’s foundation. On-camera contributions to TRT World add live news experience. When Gloucestershire Media School hired her to interview actor and writer Jessica Hynes for their flagship “An Audience With” programme, the producer described her as “the real deal” and praised her willingness to “put in the graft as a researcher and fixer.” Outside the studio she keeps a parallel professional life that informs her motivational work. She is a qualified personal trainer, a British Military Fitness instructor, a competitive strongwoman, and a former bodybuilder, and has organised a charity strongwoman event at DW Fitness Cheltenham in aid of Help for Heroes. When the brief calls for content on training and physical performance, the material is built from events she has personally walked through. Her primary booking categories are moderating, emcee work, and after-dinner hosting. Key speaking topics Live event hosting and moderation Panel facilitation in technology and corporate environments After-dinner speaking Health, fitness and wellbeing Resilience and physical performance Broadcast interviewing Ideal for Conference organisers and event programmers in the technology, business and channel-partner sectors who need a credentialed live host or moderator Internal communications and HR teams running employee wellbeing days where motivational fitness content needs delivery from someone with operator-level credentials Award ceremonies, gala dinners and after-dinner audiences who want a presenter rather than a comedian or a celebrity name Audience outcomes An audience that stays engaged through the full programme and can recall the specifics from each session, not a blurred afternoon Motivational content built from personal competitive experience (strongwoman events, bodybuilding, military fitness instruction) which does not need to dress itself up as inspiration Panels and fireside sessions where guests are actually drawn out, with the audience hearing material it could not have got from reading the speakers’ books A take on resilience and physical performance free of the borrowed-metaphor problem common in motivational speaking

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

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