Peak Performance

Why organisations work with Sir Gareth Southgate His England management tenure is the subject of a published case study at Harvard Business School – one of the few occasions in sport where a coaching approach has been formally codified as an executive leadership model. He rebuilt a national team culture from a position of public failure and sustained performance across four consecutive major tournaments. That track record gives his thinking on culture change and sustained delivery a foundation most leadership authors lack. Dear England: Lessons in Leadership (Sunday Times instant bestseller, 2025) sets out the specific reasoning behind his decisions under pressure – on accountability, psychological safety, selection, and standing behind unpopular choices – in a form directly applicable to organisational leadership. He led through personal, very public failure – the Euro ’96 penalty miss that defined a decade of his public identity – and through two consecutive tournament final defeats. His account of resilience starts from having lived the worst-case scenario, not from having studied it. During intense national debates on race, identity, and protest, he articulated a values position publicly and held a diverse squad together through that pressure. Organisations navigating social or political tension inside teams get a practitioner account of what that demands in practice. Biography highlights England men’s senior manager 2016-2024; 102 matches, 61 wins – more major tournament games won than any other England manager in history Only the second England manager to reach a major tournament final, after Sir Alf Ramsey in 1966; reached consecutive European Championship finals in 2021 and 2024 Knighted in the King’s New Year Honours 2025; previously appointed OBE in 2019 Visiting lecturer at Harvard Business School; his England tenure is the subject of a published HBS leadership case study Author of Dear England: Lessons in Leadership (Cornerstone, 2025) – an instant Sunday Times bestseller; delivered the 2025 BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC One, joining Bill Gates, Christine Lagarde, and the Prince of Wales as past speakers in the series Two-time BBC Sports Personality of the Year Coach Award (2018 and 2021); playing career spanning over 500 appearances for Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, and Middlesbrough, with 57 England caps Biography When Gareth Southgate took charge of England in 2016, the national team had just been knocked out of the Euros by Iceland. Public confidence was at a low. Over eight years and four major tournaments, he rebuilt the team’s culture entirely. The result was consecutive European Championship finals and a record for the most major tournament games won by any England manager. His approach is now the subject of a case study taught at Harvard Business School. The method was deliberate cultural architecture rather than tactical adjustment. Southgate prioritised psychological safety, shared values, and a team identity that held under pressure. His open letter to England fans during COVID-19 inspired the award-winning West End play Dear England. It demonstrated how he treated transparency and personal vulnerability as leadership tools, not liabilities. Southgate delivered the 2025 BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC One, joining Bill Gates, Christine Lagarde, and the Prince of Wales as previous speakers in the series. Dear England: Lessons in Leadership became an instant Sunday Times bestseller; the Guardian described it as articulating a moral vision that went beyond the reach of contemporary British politics. He was knighted in the King’s New Year Honours 2025 for services to association football. The fractured starting point, intense public accountability, and need to build individual and collective performance simultaneously – these are not challenges unique to sport. His insights are drawn from eight consecutive years at the sharp end of that problem, not from theory. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained public scrutiny Culture transformation and team identity Values-based accountability Resilience and performance through failure Psychological safety and trust in high-stakes teams Inclusive leadership and diversity of thought Decision-making in high-pressure environments Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite executives navigating cultural or strategic transformation CHROs and people leaders working on team culture, inclusion, and performance under pressure Board-level and executive leadership development programmes Organisations in high-scrutiny sectors – financial services, public institutions, large consumer-facing businesses – where leadership decisions carry public accountability Audience outcomes A concrete model for building values-led culture that outlasts individual results cycles First-hand perspective on decision-making under public pressure: how values, not tactics, determine outcomes over time Practical insight into what psychological safety looks like in a high-accountability, high-visibility environment A framework for holding team identity together through failure, scrutiny, and competing stakeholder demands An honest account of how personal and public setback can become the foundation of leadership credibility rather than a liability

Why organisations work with Ralf Schumacher Six Grand Prix victories with Williams between 2001 and 2003, including the team’s most recent 1-2 finish at the 2003 French Grand Prix with Juan Pablo Montoya. Performance at the front of one of the most publicly measured competitions in international sport. Still inside the sport every race weekend as Sky Deutschland’s Formula 1 co-commentator since 2019. His read on team strategy and driver dynamics reflects the current grid, not the one he raced on. Active operational role in motorsport beyond broadcasting: shareholder at Mücke Motorsport since 2013, where he mentors young Mercedes-Benz drivers, and co-team manager at US Racing since 2015 with Gerhard Ungar. Insider perspective on the data-driven culture that defines modern F1, where 1,800-person organisations align around fortnightly race deadlines and pit crews execute roughly 36 tasks in under two seconds. Biography highlights Six Formula 1 Grand Prix wins, 27 podiums, and 180 race starts across 11 seasons (1997 to 2007). Drove for Jordan, Williams, and Toyota in Formula 1; raced in DTM with Mercedes-Benz from 2008 to 2012. Won the 1995 Macau Grand Prix in Formula 3 and the 1996 Japanese Formula Nippon championship in his debut season. Co-commentator and pundit for Sky Deutschland’s Formula 1 coverage since 2019, alongside Timo Glock. Shareholder and mentor at Mücke Motorsport since 2013; co-team manager at US Racing since 2015. With brother Michael Schumacher, the only siblings to have each won Formula 1 Grands Prix. Biography Williams’ most recent 1-2 finish in Formula 1 came at the 2003 French Grand Prix. Ralf Schumacher led, Juan Pablo Montoya followed. It was the fifth of six Grand Prix victories Schumacher recorded across an eleven-season Formula 1 career with Jordan, Williams, and Toyota. The competitive ground that produced those results is unusual. A top Formula 1 team employs around 1,800 people, only a small fraction of whom ever attend a race. Performance depends on aligning that population around a calendar of two dozen race weekends where the deadlines are non-negotiable and the result is broadcast live. Drivers occupy one corner of that operation, with measurable output every fortnight. Since 2019, Schumacher has been a co-commentator for Sky Deutschland’s Formula 1 coverage, alongside Timo Glock. The role keeps his analysis current rather than archival. Each race weekend places him back inside the same strategy calls and driver dynamics he speaks about on stage, which is a meaningful gap between him and former drivers who left the sport a decade ago. Off the broadcast he runs an operational role in motorsport. Since 2013 he has been a shareholder and mentor at Mücke Motorsport, supporting young Mercedes-Benz drivers, and since 2015 he has been co-team manager at US Racing. In August 2024 he returned to racing at the Nürburgring, sharing a Ligier JS P320 LMP3 car with his son David in the Prototype Cup Germany. Seventeen years after his last Formula 1 start, he still occupies a working seat in the sport on both sides of the camera. Key speaking topics Team performance in Formula 1 Data-driven decision-making and marginal gains Risk management and safety culture in elite competition Talent development and mentoring Leadership through technological and regulatory change The business and economics of Formula 1 Ideal for Sales and commercial leadership teams in markets that grade performance every quarter Operations and engineering leaders accountable for repeatable execution against fixed deadlines High-potential and emerging-leader programmes inside multinationals DACH-region corporate audiences and German-speaking conferences Audience outcomes A vocabulary for performance under continuous pressure, drawn from one of the most publicly measured competitive environments in the world. Specific examples of how Formula 1 teams align around fortnightly race deadlines, and where that translates to corporate operating rhythm. An honest account of what F1’s data-driven culture actually produces, beyond the slogan of “marginal gains”. The view of talent development from inside the system that mentors Mercedes-Benz drivers.

Why organisations work with Bradley Scanes Five seasons inside the Red Bull Racing operation during four consecutive Verstappen world titles, with direct ownership of preparation, recovery, sleep, nutrition, and rehabilitation. The reference point is operational, not anecdotal. A career that crosses Olympic gymnastics, Olympic basketball, Premier League football medical leadership, and motorsport, which means his framing of high performance is not tied to one sport’s culture. Clinical foundations through the NHS plus two postgraduate physiotherapy degrees, which gives him a physiological grounding most performance speakers in this category do not have. Active current practice with endurance racing teams at Le Mans and Daytona and with Ironman World Champion Lucy Charles-Barclay, so the examples are current, not retrospective. Biography highlights Five-year tenure as Human Performance Consultant and Physiotherapist at Red Bull Racing, working directly with Max Verstappen, 2019 to 2024 Four-year Olympic cycle as performance coach with British Gymnastics, including work with Max Whitlock Four years with Team GB Olympic Basketball Former Head of Medical at Southend United FC; clinical foundation in the NHS BSc Sport and Exercise Science (Loughborough); MSc Physiotherapy; MSc Advanced Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy and Research (distinction) Founder and Director of Elite Formula PT; creator of the Complete Sports Practitioner mentorship programme and the Formula 1 Series Course Biography Formula 1 has the shortest feedback loop in elite performance. Decisions made on Thursday show up in a stopwatch on Sunday, and the operating environment inside a top team is built around removing every variable that could cost a tenth of a second. For five seasons, that environment was Bradley Scanes’ workplace. As Human Performance Consultant and Physiotherapist at Red Bull Racing from 2019 to 2024, he was responsible for Max Verstappen’s physical preparation, recovery, sleep, nutrition, and rehabilitation across the four world championship campaigns that defined the team’s modern era. The work sat inside an organisation of more than 1,800 staff where a pit stop is measured in tenths and a tyre temperature is a strategic input. The route in was unusual. Loughborough sport science, then a Masters in physiotherapy, then a second Masters in advanced musculoskeletal physiotherapy with distinction. NHS clinical work. Head of Medical at Southend United FC. Four years with Team GB Olympic Basketball and a full Olympic cycle with British Gymnastics, including campaigns with Max Whitlock. By the time he reached Red Bull, the question of how athletes perform under pressure had been examined from five different sports and two clinical settings. He now runs Elite Formula PT, coaches Ironman World Champion Lucy Charles-Barclay, and works across endurance racing teams competing at Le Mans and Daytona. The training programmes he has written for the next generation of sports practitioners, including the Formula 1 Series Course, are taught from inside that current practice, which is why senior corporate audiences come away with operating language they can actually use the following Monday. Key speaking topics High-performance culture Recovery and sleep as performance variables Team execution under pressure Marginal gains and continuous improvement Safety, risk and learning culture in elite sport Leadership lessons from Formula 1 Composure and decision-making under load Ideal for Executive leadership teams stress-testing how they perform under sustained pressure Operations and transformation leaders looking at cycle time, error rate, and team execution Sales and commercial leadership teams preparing for high-stakes quarters People and talent leaders rebuilding cultures around recovery, focus and sustained output Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for recovery, sleep, and composure as measurable inputs to senior performance A concrete picture of how a top F1 team reduces error and increases cycle precision under time pressure Reference points from Olympic and motorsport environments that translate to corporate execution A sharper sense of how elite teams treat safety, risk and learning culture as performance levers rather than compliance

Why organisations work with Felipe Gomez A working framework, the Virtuoso Code, built on three pillars (Method, Attitude, Passion) that gives leaders a concrete vocabulary for what separates technical competence from sustained excellence. Operating credibility behind the metaphor: tripled revenue at Compass Group Colombia, built Farmacity Colombia from launch, and scaled an e-business consultancy across seven Latin American countries. A separate, codified entrepreneurial-mindset model (Attitude-E, six levers) published as a bestselling book in 2019, usable as a standalone keynote for growth and innovation audiences. A live grand piano performance integrated into the keynote, which makes the content memorable in a way a slide deck cannot replicate. Useful when the brief calls for emotional anchoring of a strategy message at a leadership conference or kick-off. Bilingual delivery in English and Spanish, with substantial reach across Latin American corporate audiences. Biography highlights MBA, IMD Lausanne; advanced training in Leading Digital Business Transformation. Author of Attitude-E (2019) and Bitácora De Una Pandemia En Quince Conversaciones (2020). Former Managing Director, Compass Group Colombia; founding president, Farmacity Colombia. Founder of Ink./Azurian, scaled to seven Latin American countries. Speaker at TED, Global Peter Drucker Forum, WOBI, World Business Forum, Oslo Business Forum. 1,000+ keynote engagements across 33 countries on five continents. Biography The habits that produce a virtuoso musician are remarkably specific. Hours of structured practice, an attitude toward error that treats mistakes as information, a relationship with a craft that survives long after the early thrill has gone. Felipe Gomez has spent the last decade arguing that the same habits produce sustained performance in business, and using a grand piano on stage to make the case. The argument has operating weight behind it. Before turning to speaking full time in 2014, Gomez ran Compass Group Colombia as Managing Director, tripling revenue and lifting operating profit 130%. He was founding president of Farmacity Colombia, opening twelve stores in twenty months. Earlier he had built Ink., later Azurian, into the first significant e-business consultancy in Latin America, with offices in seven countries. The Virtuoso Code, his current keynote framework, organises that experience into three pillars: Method, Attitude, Passion. Method is the discipline of consistent, rigorous practice. Attitude is the empathy and humility that make collaboration possible. Passion is the courage to keep going when the work stops being easy. Attitude-E, his 2019 book, applies the same lens to entrepreneurship through six levers: Envision, Energy, Endurance, Ensemble, Elasticity, Engagement. Gomez has presented at TED, the Global Peter Drucker Forum, WOBI, the World Business Forum, and the Oslo Business Forum, in 33 countries on five continents. He delivers in English and Spanish, and his Allegro non-profit brings live therapeutic music to hospital settings in Colombia. Key speaking topics Peak performance and sustained excellence Entrepreneurial mindset and operating discipline Leadership, empathy, and collaboration Innovation culture Active listening and communication Resilience under pressure Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership conferences anchoring a year-long performance or culture programme. Sales and commercial kick-off events where a leadership message needs emotional anchoring. Latin American and Hispanic corporate audiences requiring senior bilingual delivery. Entrepreneurship and scale-up forums where Attitude-E is the relevant frame. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary, Method, Attitude, Passion, for what separates sustained performers from talented amateurs. The six Attitude-E levers as a working checklist for entrepreneurial behaviour inside a corporate setting. A specific, memorable anchor for a leadership or kick-off message, reinforced by live piano performance. Practical cues for active listening drawn from Gomez’s 5Ts approach.

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

Why organisations work with 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 Jeanette Kwakye A working national broadcaster, not a former athlete trading on past results. Buyers get a host who runs live BBC Sport and ITV current affairs every week, with the on-stage instincts that come with it. Rare credibility on women in sport and media. She broke a 24-year drought as a British woman in the Olympic 100m final, then became the first Black female UK presenter to front a terrestrial boxing production. Hosting and moderation experience with Google, Nike, BMW, the IOC and World Athletics, which translates into clean panel craft for senior leadership audiences. Direct, unsentimental on the transition from elite sport to a second career. Useful for talent, learning and DEI conversations that have grown tired of the standard sportsperson keynote. Biography highlights Sixth place in the 100m final at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the first British woman in that final since 1984. Silver medallist over 60m at the 2008 IAAF World Indoor Championships, equalling the British record of 7.08. BBC athletics trackside reporter; host of BBC Radio 5 Live’s Football Daily podcast; co-host of BBC Radio 5 Live Weekend Breakfast. Co-host of The Martin Lewis Money Show on ITV1. First Black female UK TV presenter to lead a boxing production on a terrestrial channel, on Channel 5. Appointed MBE in the 2021 Birthday Honours for services to sport and sports broadcasting. Loughborough University graduate in Politics and Economics; author of the children’s book Femi the Fox. Biography A British woman had not reached an Olympic 100m final for twenty-four years when Jeanette Kwakye ran 11.14 in Beijing in 2008 and finished sixth. The earlier rounds, not the final, are the part that matters. She trained at Loughborough, came through British championships in both the 100m and 200m, and took silver over 60m at the World Indoors that same year, equalling the British record of 7.08. The second career has the same shape. After retiring in 2014 she went through an NCTJ qualification, started in local BBC radio, and built outwards. She is now a BBC athletics trackside reporter, hosts the Football Daily podcast on BBC Radio 5 Live, co-hosts Weekend Breakfast on the same station, and co-presents The Martin Lewis Money Show on ITV1. In 2020, she became the first Black female presenter on a terrestrial UK boxing production. Her hosting and moderation portfolio outside broadcast covers Google, Nike, BMW, the International Olympic Committee and World Athletics. Senior audiences hire her because she runs a room cleanly, pushes panellists, and brings a working journalist’s instinct to questions of representation and performance rather than a retired-athlete reflection. She was appointed MBE in 2021 for services to sport and sports broadcasting. She is also the author of the children’s book Femi the Fox. Key speaking topics Representation in sport and media Women in broadcasting and elite sport High-performance mindset Career transition from elite sport Olympic preparation and selection Sports broadcasting and journalism Resilience after injury Ideal for Conference and summit organisers needing a host or moderator with senior on-stage credibility DEI, talent and people leaders running events on representation and women’s progression Sports industry, federation and rights-holder events Internal kick-offs and leadership offsites looking for an Olympic-finalist perspective on performance under pressure Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what representation actually changes inside elite environments, told from inside two of them A working definition of high performance that survives contact with injury, deselection and reinvention Practical ground for talent and DEI leaders considering how the pipeline into senior visible roles really moves A panel or fireside that lands cleanly, with a host who keeps senior speakers honest

Why organisations work with Julie Gautier A first-hand discipline of working under physiological pressure that few keynote speakers can credibly claim. Two French records in constant weight freediving, minus 68 metres on a single breath, are evidence of a practice, not an anecdote. A creative body of work that translates the discipline into something an audience can feel. Ama, shot in a single breath in the world’s deepest pool, has reached a wide international audience and has become a reference point for how breath, focus and stillness are cultivated. Direct relevance to leadership audiences asking how to stay composed under public scrutiny, scrutiny markets, board pressure or crisis. The mechanism she describes is concrete: how the breath is trained, how attention is held, how panic is metabolised before it becomes decision. A second register of value for organisations working on creativity, environmental purpose, or the relationship between people and the natural world. Her films sit inside that conversation rather than next to it. Biography highlights Two French records in constant weight freediving, minus 65 metres (2006) and minus 68 metres (2007). Co-founder of Les Films Engloutis, the production label behind her underwater work. Writer and director of Ama, performed in a single breath in the Y-40 deep pool, Italy. Co-director and writer of the underwater music video for Beyoncé and Naughty Boy’s “Runnin’ (Lose It All)” (2015). Director of One Breath Around the World, featured in National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase. TEDxLausanneWomen speaker, December 2019, “Inspiration in the Absence of Breath”. Biography Holding the breath is a trained skill, not a held-back reflex. Gautier worked on it for nine years as a competitive freediver, including two French national records in constant weight, before stepping out of the sport in 2009. The discipline she learned, working with the breath rather than against it, is the substance she now brings to leadership audiences. Her second career has been as a director and performer in underwater cinema. With Guillaume Néry, she co-founded Les Films Engloutis, the label behind films including Narcose, Ocean Gravity and One Breath Around the World, the last of which was carried by National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase. She also co-directed and wrote the underwater music video for Beyoncé and Naughty Boy’s “Runnin’ (Lose It All)”. Ama, released on International Women’s Day in 2018, is the work that brought the practice into the cultural conversation. It is a single-breath performance in the Y-40 deep pool in Italy, choreographed and performed by Gautier herself. It has been read as a piece on grief, on women’s resilience, on the management of pressure, on the value of stillness. It is not a metaphor for any of those things. It is the discipline made visible. For a corporate audience, the relevance is direct. Senior leaders are working in conditions where composure has become a performance variable. Gautier’s contribution is not motivational language. It is a description of how a person who has practised breath and attention under real physiological constraint actually does it, and what transfers when the audience walks out of the room. Key speaking topics Breath, focus and composure under pressure Self-leadership and emotional regulation Creativity drawn from natural environments Personal discipline and long-form practice Ocean storytelling and environmental purpose Ideal for Senior leadership offsites where composure under public pressure is a stated theme Cultural and inspirational segments of conferences for boards, executive committees and partner audiences Wellbeing, performance and people-function summits looking for substantive content on breath and attention Brand, creative and sustainability events where ocean storytelling has natural anchor Audience outcomes A concrete account of how breath is trained as a tool for focus, not as a wellness motif A vocabulary for talking about composure as a learned practice rather than a personal trait Visual material, drawn from her films, that audiences continue to discuss after the session A working frame for how stillness, patience and humility translate into professional performance

Why organisations work with Jordan Banjo A live broadcaster’s instinct for pace, autocue, links and crowd energy, built across Got to Dance, The Greatest Dancer, Dancing On Ice and the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards Five years of daily live radio hosting on KISS Breakfast, the discipline that translates most directly into running a long awards show without the room flagging Recognition that travels across audiences from boardrooms to family-facing events, anchored to Diversity’s 2009 Britain’s Got Talent win and a continuous national TV presence since A second register beyond hosting: a personal arc through Diversity, family, weight loss and a current move into competitive boxing with DAZN, available where a brief calls for motivational content rather than presenting Biography highlights Founding member of Diversity, winners of Britain’s Got Talent series 3 (2009) Co-host of KISS Breakfast with Perri Kiely, 2020 to January 2026 TV credits include Got to Dance, The Greatest Dancer, Dancing On Ice digital, Eat Well For Less, and the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards UK Runner-up on I’m a Celebrity: South Africa All-Stars (2023); previously a series 16 contestant (2016) On-screen presenter for DAZN boxing coverage Co-author with Ashley Banjo of the children’s books Fly High Crew and The Day We Saved The Future Biography Diversity walked onto Britain’s Got Talent in 2009 as an unknown street dance group from Essex and walked off as the winners of the series. Jordan Banjo, then sixteen, was the youngest on stage. The group has remained a fixture of British popular culture ever since, and Banjo has built the broadest broadcasting career of any of its original members. Most of that career has been live. Got to Dance on Sky, The Greatest Dancer on BBC One, Dancing On Ice digital for ITV, Eat Well For Less, and the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards UK have all required the same skill: keep a room or a camera on rhythm without losing the audience. Five years of daily breakfast radio on KISS, alongside Perri Kiely, sharpened it further. For corporate buyers, the value is straightforward. A host with this volume of live-television and live-radio reps does not freeze on a long running order, does not over-talk a sponsor read, and does not let an awards show drift in the second hour. The face is recognisable to a broad audience, which matters when the brief includes family events, consumer-facing brand moments or all-staff celebrations rather than narrow C-suite rooms. Where a brief asks for content rather than hosting, Banjo can speak from his own arc: the discipline of a winning team rebuilt year after year, public weight loss, family, fatherhood, and a current move into the boxing ring with DAZN, following his father Funso Banjo, a former professional fighter. Key speaking topics Awards and conference hosting Live event presenting Team performance, drawn from Diversity Personal motivation and reinvention Family, fitness and boxing Brand and audience engagement on camera Ideal for Internal all-staff conferences and end-of-year celebrations needing a recognisable host Awards nights and gala dinners requiring a broadcast-trained presenter Consumer brand events targeting family and mainstream UK audiences Sponsorship activations and product launches with on-camera elements Audience outcomes A live event run at television pace, with cleaner cues and tighter links Higher audience energy across long-form running orders, particularly in the second half A recognisable on-stage face that broadens the room beyond a purely corporate audience Where booked as content, a personal story of team success, public scrutiny and physical reinvention

Why organisations work with Dr Tess Morris-Paterson She has carried the same performance methodology through three of the most demanding operating environments in the world: Premier League football, NASA-aligned spaceflight research, and a Royal Engineers command. Few practitioners have a comparable triangulation. She designs the actual selection criteria for human spaceflight, so her view on how to assess composure, judgement and team fit is grounded in systems that are used to decide who flies. Her research on microgravity physiology and astronaut training has been recognised by the International Astronautical Federation, the Aerospace Medical Association and NASA’s Human Research Program. She talks to executives the way she talks to operators, with no astronaut mythology and no sports-cliche residue. The transfer to commercial settings is direct. She is credible on inclusion in male-dominated environments without leaving the performance frame: five years as one of three women in the Premier League, and an officer corps that is roughly five percent female. Biography highlights Chartered Scientist; PhD, King’s College London, Centre of Human and Aerospace Physiological Sciences. Visiting scientist, NASA Ames Research Center; alumna of the International Space University. Founder of a consultancy supporting international space agencies on astronaut selection and training. Award recipient of the International Astronautical Federation, the Aerospace Medical Association and NASA’s Human Research Program; named a 2019 Emerging Space Leader. Former Head of Performance across Premier League football, the Football Association, Women’s Super League, McLaren Formula One, and Olympic and Paralympic programmes. British Army Reserve Officer, Royal Engineers, with command of a unit of up to 100 personnel. Biography Astronaut crews are not the most talented people in the room. They are the people most likely to make the right call on the worst day of the mission, and the selection process is built to find that. Morris-Paterson designs that kind of process for international space agencies, and the same logic now informs how she advises commercial leadership teams. She came to spaceflight through elite sport. For five years she was one of three women operating at Head of Performance level in the Premier League, with later work spanning the Football Association, the Women’s Super League, McLaren Formula One, and Olympic and Paralympic programmes. The shared question across those settings was always the same: what conditions reliably produce a good decision when there is no margin for a bad one. That question carried into her research. As a chartered scientist trained at NASA Ames Research Center and the International Space University, her work on microgravity physiology and astronaut training has been recognised by the International Astronautical Federation, the Aerospace Medical Association and NASA’s Human Research Program, and she was named a 2019 Emerging Space Leader. She now runs a consultancy that supports astronaut selection and training for international space agencies. A third operating environment sharpens the picture. As a British Army Reserve Officer in the Royal Engineers, she has held command of a unit of up to 100 personnel. The combination matters because her arguments about leadership under pressure are not assembled from secondary sources. They come from environments where the cost of getting it wrong is direct, measurable, and sometimes irreversible. Key speaking topics Performance under extreme conditions Astronaut selection, training and human spaceflight Team design and decision-making in elite sport Leadership in male-dominated operating environments Resilience and recovery in high-stakes work Translating elite-performance methodology into commercial settings Ideal for Executive teams and boards facing decisions where error cost is high and recovery time is short CHROs and chief talent officers redesigning selection, assessment and leadership-development pipelines Leadership audiences in defence, aerospace, energy, financial services and elite sport Programmes focused on women progressing in male-dominated technical or operational fields Audience outcomes A working model for how high-stakes operators are selected, not just trained Specific selection signals that predict composure and judgement under load A clearer view of how elite teams in sport and spaceflight handle feedback, recovery and the cost of error Evidence-based language for talking about inclusion in technical environments without losing the performance frame Transferable practices from astronaut, Premier League and military preparation that hold up in commercial settings

Why organisations work with Kevin Fong He has run the actual command-and-control work organisations rehearse in tabletop exercises: seconded to NHS England as National Clinical Advisor for Emergency Preparedness during COVID-19, embedded with the British Military Emergency Response Team in Afghanistan, and active on a UK air ambulance crew. He brings a tested method for high-pressure decision-making drawn from anaesthesia, prehospital medicine and human spaceflight, sectors where the standards for crew performance are explicit and audited. His Apollo and Apollo 13 work for the BBC, including the World Service podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon, is built from primary interviews with the controllers and astronauts who made the calls. The case material is specific, not anecdotal. He holds a serious clinical and academic post (UCLH consultant; UCL professor; co-director of CASE Medicine), so his framing of human limits and team performance survives scrutiny by technical audiences. He was appointed OBE in 2019 for services to medicine and healthcare, and delivered the 2015 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on space medicine, a platform with a high bar for clarity and authority. Biography highlights Consultant anaesthetist, University College London Hospitals; Professor of Public Engagement and Innovation, UCL. Co-director, Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine (CASE Medicine), UCL. National Clinical Advisor in Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response, NHS England (COVID-19 secondment, from March 2020). HEMS doctor, Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex; previously embedded with British Military Emergency Response Team, Afghanistan; alumnus of NASA’s human spaceflight programme, Johnson Space Center. Presenter, 2015 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (BBC Four); host of BBC World Service podcasts 13 Minutes to the Moon and 13 Minutes Presents: Apollo 13. Author, Extremes: Life, Death and the Limits of the Human Body (Hodder). OBE, 2019, for services to medicine and healthcare. Biography The Apollo 11 lunar module ran out of usable computer memory in the final minutes of its descent. The crew had thirteen minutes to reach the surface or abort. The decision to land was made by a flight director who had spent his career rehearsing exactly that kind of call. Fong’s BBC World Service series 13 Minutes to the Moon was built from first-hand interviews with the controllers and astronauts who made it work, and it is the clearest expression of what his speaking practice is actually about. The thread runs through his clinical career. As a consultant anaesthetist at UCLH, a HEMS doctor with Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex, and a clinician embedded with the British Military Emergency Response Team in Afghanistan, he has spent his working life inside the systems that train teams to function when the cost of error is immediate. In March 2020, he was seconded to NHS England as National Clinical Advisor in Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response, working at the centre of the COVID-19 response and the vaccine rollout. The academic infrastructure underneath the speaking is substantive. He is a professor at UCL and co-director of the Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine, with degrees spanning astrophysics, medicine and engineering and a long association with NASA’s human spaceflight programme at Johnson Space Center. The book Extremes and the 2015 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures sit on top of that record, not in place of it. What he gives a corporate audience is a translation. The protocols that make space crews, trauma teams and air ambulance services reliable under extreme strain are not analogies for business leadership; they are concrete practices that can be examined and adopted. The 2019 OBE recognises a body of work that already crosses medicine, science and public communication, which is why his sessions land with technical leaders, not only general audiences. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure High-performing teams in safety-critical environments Crisis leadership and command Pandemic response and healthcare resilience Human spaceflight and extreme environment medicine Risk and human factors Leadership lessons from Apollo Ideal for CEOs, COOs and crisis leadership teams preparing for low-probability, high-consequence events Boards and risk committees stress-testing operational resilience and command structures Leadership development programmes for clinical, aviation, energy, defence and infrastructure organisations Conferences for senior medical, scientific and engineering audiences who reject generic motivational content Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for human factors, crew resource management and command structure that can be applied inside their own organisations Specific, named case material from Apollo 11, Apollo 13 and the COVID-19 response, used to interrogate how their own teams would behave A clearer view of where their organisation is rehearsed and where it is improvising under pressure Renewed conviction in the operational standards that distinguish reliable teams from the rest