Peak Performance speakers

Why organisations work with Arsène Wenger He is the only senior practitioner in any field who built and led a team through an entire unbeaten top-flight league season – a 38-game case study in what sustained, system-level performance actually requires, fully documented and independently verifiable. His most instructive period for organisations is arguably not the Invincibles season but the decade that followed: leading under financial constraint, serial talent loss, and rivals with structurally larger budgets, while still maintaining Champions League qualification and winning trophies. This is the pressure most organisations recognise. His framework for leadership – distinguishing clearly between the structural long-term work of the manager and the motivational short-term work of the coach, and insisting both must operate simultaneously – gives senior leaders a concrete architecture for their own role, not a motivational analogy. Cross-cultural management experience across France, Japan, and England, combined with an economics degree from the University of Strasbourg, means his account of how performance systems are built is structural and comparative, not anecdotal. His current role at FIFA – overseeing global coaching standards, the IFAB rules-making body, and technical analysis of international tournaments – extends his perspective from club performance to institutional design and global governance, a dimension no other speaker in this market shares. Biography highlights Managed Arsenal for 22 years (1996-2018) – the longest tenure in the club’s history and in the history of the Premier League; won 3 Premier League titles and a then-record 7 FA Cups Architect of the 2003-04 Arsenal “Invincibles” – the only team to complete an unbeaten top-flight English league season in the modern era (38 matches) Previously managed AS Monaco (Ligue 1 title 1988; Coupe de France 1991) and Nagoya Grampus Eight, Japan (Emperor’s Cup; J-League Manager of the Year, 1995) Three-time Premier League Manager of the Season (1997-98, 2001-02, 2003-04) FIFA Chief of Global Football Development (appointed 2019); chairs the FIFA Technical Study Group and oversees IFAB and global coaching education Awarded the Légion d’honneur (2002) and an Honorary OBE (2003); inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame (2006) Autobiography My Life in Red and White (Orion, 2020) – Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller; the second football manager ever to reach No. 1 overall Economics degree, University of Strasbourg; fluent in six languages Biography The 2003-04 Arsenal season – 38 Premier League matches, zero defeats – remains the only unbeaten campaign in English football’s modern era. What made it possible was not an exceptional squad alone, but a system: nutritional standards that transformed player fitness, analytical scouting methods, and a culture whose values were defined by players and coaching staff together at the start of each season. Arsène Wenger’s career was cross-cultural long before that was a leadership virtue. He won the French league title with AS Monaco in 1988, then moved deliberately to Japan – taking Nagoya Grampus Eight to the Emperor’s Cup and the J-League Manager of the Year award in 1995. Managing across France, Japan, and England gave him a comparative framework for what in performance systems is universal, and what depends on context. At Arsenal, the decade after the Invincibles season is often more instructive for organisations than the unbeaten campaign itself. Wenger sustained Champions League qualification and FA Cup success while operating under severe financial constraint and losing key talent to better-funded rivals – conditions organisations recognise more readily than an anomalous trophy season. His autobiography, My Life in Red and White (Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller, 2020), and public appearances – including at the Bank of America Global Investor Summit and the Gartner IT Symposium – return consistently to a single structural argument: effective leadership requires the manager’s long-term, institutional work and the coach’s short-term, motivational work to operate simultaneously, not in sequence. Since 2019, Wenger has served as FIFA’s Chief of Global Football Development, overseeing global coaching education, the IFAB rules-making panel, and technical analysis of international tournaments. He holds an economics degree from the University of Strasbourg, France’s Légion d’honneur, an Honorary OBE, and a place in the English Football Hall of Fame. His perspective on competitive sustainability is drawn from specific, verifiable decisions made under extreme and sustained pressure – which is precisely what distinguishes it. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance and competitive advantage Talent identification, development, and succession systems Organisational culture and values-based leadership Long-term strategy under short-term performance pressure Cross-cultural team management Performance science and the modernisation of professional sport Global football governance and institutional development Ideal for C-suite and board-level leaders accountable for long-term competitive positioning CHROs and people directors designing talent development and succession pipelines Senior leadership conferences in financial services, professional services, and sport Transformation leaders managing performance culture through periods of resource constraint or competitive disruption Audience outcomes A clear, applicable distinction between managing (structural, long-term) and coaching (motivational, short-term) – and why both must run in parallel rather than sequence A concrete, verified case study in what sustained competitive advantage looks like in practice: the talent, culture, and decision-making systems behind it Practical perspectives on leading through constraint and transition – not just peak success – drawn from a decade of performing under significant competitive disadvantage An understanding of how cross-cultural experience informs more resilient, adaptive performance systems A framework for building culture from the inside: how shared values, standards, and accountability are established, maintained, and renewed across successive generations of people

Why organisations work with Axel Alletru He offers a rare verifiable proof point for resilience: the first paraplegic driver to win a category at the Dakar Rally, beating able-bodied competitors in the SSV T3S class in 2020. His career crosses three elite disciplines (motocross, para swimming, rally-raid), which lets him speak credibly about rebuilding capability from zero rather than delivering a single-sport anecdote. He works regularly with CAC40 companies, SMEs and business clubs, having delivered more than 400 keynotes since 2017, so his corporate register is already tuned for leadership and all-hands audiences. His two published books, “28 Principes pour rebondir” and “Et toujours rebondir” (Albin Michel), give organisations a structured vocabulary for recovery that extends beyond the keynote itself. Bilingual delivery in French and English makes him directly usable for multi-country leadership events across European and global teams. Biography highlights First disabled driver to win a category at the Dakar Rally: SSV T3S class, January 2020, competing against able-bodied teams. Former MX2 World Championship motocross rider, rated one of France’s strongest prospects in the discipline before his 2010 crash. Three-time European BMX champion and junior world runner-up earlier in his career. 12-time French Handisport swimming champion and European Masters Games gold medallist in 50m and 100m freestyle. Author of “28 Principes pour rebondir” (2018) and “Et toujours rebondir” (Albin Michel, 2024). Subject of the Canal+ documentary “Holeshot, un virage pour la vie”. Biography The 2010 MX2 World Championship season ended for one French rider with a crash that took away the use of his legs at age 20. A full motocross career, built from European BMX titles and a junior world runner-up result, stopped in a single weekend. The question was no longer how to win. It was whether competitive sport was finished. Ten years later, Axel Alletru crossed a Dakar Rally finish line in Saudi Arabia first in the SSV T3S category and seventh in the overall SSV class, making him the first disabled driver to win a Dakar category against able-bodied competitors. Between those two points sat a 12-time French Handisport swimming title, a European Masters Games gold in freestyle, and years of rebuilding physical capacity that doctors had not expected to return. That arc is what corporate audiences actually buy. It gives him a specific answer to the question leadership teams keep landing on: how do people and organisations recover usable performance after a hard stop, not just morale. He has turned the answer into two published works, “28 Principes pour rebondir” and “Et toujours rebondir” with Albin Michel, and into a speaking practice that covers more than 400 engagements since 2017 for CAC40 groups, mid-market firms and business clubs. He delivers in French and English, and his preferred frame is practical rather than inspirational. Teams leave with a working model for how reinvention happens under constraint, anchored in a career that has had to produce results in three elite disciplines rather than one. Key speaking topics Resilience after serious setback High performance under constraint Mental strength and recovery Team and collective performance Sport lessons applied to business leadership Reinvention and career rebuilds Disability and performance Ideal for Executive leadership teams facing restructuring, failed launches or strategic reset All-company events where leaders want a credible frame for resilience rather than generic motivation Sales, operations and transformation groups under sustained performance pressure HR, talent and employee engagement leads programming flagship annual events Audience outcomes A concrete language for recovery that leaders can carry back into their own teams A working model for how people rebuild capability after a hard stop, drawn from three elite disciplines Renewed belief that ambitious targets remain reachable after disruption, supported by specific evidence rather than slogans Stronger read on the role collective structure plays in individual comebacks, relevant to team design and leadership

Why organisations work with Barbara Oakley Her “focused mode/diffuse mode” framework gives L&D teams a named, neuroscience-backed model for redesigning how training is structured, not just what it covers. It establishes that structured recovery and retrieval practice matter as much as instruction time, a claim with direct implications for how organisations budget and sequence learning investment. “Learning How to Learn,” co-created with Salk Institute neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, has been taken by over 4 million people on Coursera. That scale of real-world adoption gives her frameworks empirical grounding that no controlled study can fully replicate. Her personal trajectory from U.S. Army linguist to engineering professor, achieved through deliberate adult retraining, is the primary evidence for her central argument that capability can be built at any career stage. For organisations running reskilling programmes, that is more persuasive than theory from a researcher who has never made the journey themselves. “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), a New York Times bestseller translated into 13 languages with over 1 million copies sold, means her frameworks already have traction well beyond corporate learning circles. Audiences often arrive familiar with her work, reducing the credibility gap that typically slows training adoption. The 2023 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, administered through the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and widely considered the field’s most prestigious award, recognised Oakley as the inaugural winner in a new Lifelong Learning category – independent confirmation that her contribution to continuous capability development is field-defining. Biography highlights Distinguished Professor of Engineering, Oakland University; Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning, McMaster University Inaugural winner of the 2023 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education (Lifelong Learning category), administered through the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education Co-creator (with neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, Salk Institute) of “Learning How to Learn” on Coursera – over 4 million enrolled, one of the most widely taken courses in the history of online education Author of “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), a New York Times bestselling science book translated into 13 languages with over 1 million copies sold; subsequent titles include “Mindshift” (2017), “Uncommon Sense Teaching” (2021), and “Learn Like a Pro” (2021) Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal; Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year (2018) Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering; Coursera’s inaugural “Innovation Instructor” Former U.S. Army Captain; recognised as Distinguished Military Scholar Biography In 2014, a Coursera course called “Learning How to Learn” attracted over 300,000 students in its first three runs. It now has over 4 million enrolled, making it one of the most widely taken courses in the history of online education. That appetite reflects a gap most organisational training does not close: a practical understanding of how capability is actually built. Barbara Oakley created that course with neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski of the Salk Institute. She came to the research through direct experience: a former U.S. Army Captain trained as a linguist, she retaught herself mathematics and engineering entirely as an adult. Her own career transition is the most direct demonstration of her central argument – that capability is genuinely malleable, and that the brain can acquire new domains of expertise at any career stage. Her “focused mode/diffuse mode” framework, named in “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), gives organisations a practical model for how concentration, structured recovery, and retrieval interact in the learning process. The book reached New York Times bestseller status and has been translated into 13 languages. Subsequent titles including “Mindshift,” “Uncommon Sense Teaching,” and “Learn Like a Pro” extend the framework into career reinvention, teaching design, and AI-era learning. In 2023, she received the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, the most prestigious award in the field, as inaugural winner in a newly created Lifelong Learning category. She is Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Oakland University and holds a concurrent appointment as Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning at McMaster University. Key speaking topics The neuroscience of effective learning and skill retention Workforce reskilling and adult capability development Learning frameworks for the age of AI Building organisational learning culture Career reinvention and professional mindset The science of effective training design Cognitive performance and focus at work Ideal for CHROs and L&D directors designing or auditing workforce capability programmes CEOs and executive teams navigating AI-driven workforce transition and reskilling investment Corporate universities and internal learning academies benchmarking training effectiveness Boards and transformation leads sponsoring large-scale reskilling or career transition initiatives Audience outcomes A named neuroscience framework (focused vs. diffuse mode) for understanding how attention, structured recovery, and retrieval interact in the learning process Evidence-based techniques (retrieval practice, spaced repetition, the Pomodoro method) that individuals and teams can apply immediately to improve learning retention A reframe of learning ability from fixed trait to trainable skill, with direct implications for how organisations identify, develop, and retain talent Clarity on why conventional training approaches consistently underdeliver, and what research-supported alternatives look like in practice A grounded argument for why adult capability development is achievable at any career stage, drawn from both neuroscience and the speaker’s own documented transition

Why organisations work with Baroness Grey-Thompson She chaired the government’s independent Duty of Care in Sport review (2017), producing recommendations on athlete welfare, safeguarding, and governing body accountability. Her authority on organisational responsibility comes from having produced the policy, not just commented on it. Her perspective on inclusion is grounded in decades of lived experience as a disabled person navigating institutions not designed for her – which gives her a precision and candour on the subject that no theoretical framework produces. As a sitting crossbench peer, she debates welfare reform, disability rights and sport governance in Parliament. Her understanding of how policy accountability functions – or fails to – is current, not retrospective. She has held board-level positions across sport, transport, broadcasting and the public sector. She speaks to senior decision-makers from a position of peer-level governance experience, not from outside it. Eleven Paralympic gold medals and six London Wheelchair Marathon victories represent one of the most demanding sustained performance records in British sporting history. Her insight into resilience and long-term excellence comes from a context that most performance speakers cannot match. Biography highlights 11 Paralympic gold medals across five Games (Seoul 1988 to Athens 2004); six London Wheelchair Marathon victories; over 30 world records Baroness Grey-Thompson DBE; crossbench member of the House of Lords since 2010; debates welfare reform, disability rights and sport governance Led the government-commissioned independent Duty of Care in Sport review, published April 2017 Chancellor of Northumbria University since 2015; honorary Doctor of Law, University of Cambridge (2016) Member of the Laureus World Sports Academy; BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award, 2019 Board experience includes Transport for London, London Legacy Development Corporation, ukactive (Chair), BBC and UK Athletics Biography The question of how organisations balance the drive for performance with the duty to protect the people inside them is one that Tanni Grey-Thompson has spent three decades navigating – first as an elite athlete competing in systems rarely designed with her in mind, then as a legislator and governance lead responsible for changing them. Her athletic record is the foundation of her credibility. Across five Paralympic Games between 1988 and 2004, she won 11 gold medals in wheelchair racing, set over 30 world records, and won the London Wheelchair Marathon six times. What that record represents, beyond the numbers, is sustained excellence under physical and institutional pressure. She competed with spina bifida in an era when structural support for disabled athletes was limited, and she won anyway – a fact that shapes everything she says about resilience and the conditions that enable long-term achievement. In 2017, the government commissioned her to lead an independent review into duty of care in sport. The resulting report set out recommendations on athlete welfare, safeguarding, mental wellbeing, and the accountability of governing bodies for the people in their systems. It remains the most authoritative published framework on institutional responsibility in British sport, and it gave her a body of work that no other speaker in the inclusion space can claim. She joined the House of Lords as a crossbench peer in 2010, where she debates welfare reform, disability rights and sport governance. Her board experience spans Transport for London, the London Legacy Development Corporation, ukactive, the BBC, and UK Athletics. She has been Chancellor of Northumbria University since 2015. What she brings to a senior audience is not a motivational narrative – it is a working knowledge of how accountability for people actually functions, or fails to, in large organisations. Key speaking topics Elite performance and sustained achievement Inclusion and disability in organisational life Duty of care and institutional accountability Leadership under pressure Governance and board responsibility Disability rights and welfare policy Sport governance and athlete welfare Ideal for Senior leadership and board teams where performance expectations and inclusion commitments are in tension HR, people and DEI leaders responsible for disability inclusion and employee wellbeing strategy Public sector, sport and charitable sector boards with governance and accountability responsibilities Corporate audiences undergoing culture change where the gap between stated values and daily practice is a live concern Audience outcomes A sharper understanding of where performance culture and duty of care come into structural conflict – and what resolving that actually requires First-hand perspective on what inclusion looks like beyond policy, drawn from lived experience in systems not designed for disability Grounded insight into board-level accountability for the wellbeing of people inside an organisation An honest account of sustained high performance – what enabled it, what threatened it, and what the institutions around her got right and wrong Practical framing for the gap between an organisation’s stated commitments and the culture leaders actually sustain

Why organisations work with Baz Moffat She runs the consultancy that adidas, The Gym Group and England Netball use to redesign female-health training and policy. Buyers get an operator with live commercial programmes, not a speaker reading the literature. Co-author of The Female Body Bible, the Sunday Times bestseller now published in five languages, written with an NHS GP and a former Head of Physiology at the UK Sports Institute. The credentialled trio is what gives her positions weight inside HR, medical and performance functions. Translates female physiology into manager behaviour, line manager conversations, training plans and return-to-work protocols. Audiences leave with language and decisions, not slogans. Speaks from inside the system she is critiquing. Former GB rower, 20 years in coaching and high performance, World Championship medallist, mother of two. The lived ground makes the policy argument harder to dismiss. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of The Well HQ, female-health consultancy to brands, governing bodies and corporates including adidas, The Gym Group, England Netball and The Fitness Group. Co-author, The Female Body Bible (Yellow Kite, Hachette, 2023), Sunday Times bestseller, published in five languages. GB Rowing Team member 2005 to 2008; raced in the women’s eight at the 2007 World Rowing Championships, Munich. BSc Sports Science, First Class, University of Birmingham; MSc Health Related Behaviour Change, University of Bristol. Spoke at the Council of Europe International Women’s Day roundtable on female health in sport. Twenty years’ experience as a coach, personal trainer and Holistic Core Restore practitioner. Biography Most workplace wellbeing programmes are still calibrated to a male default. Female-specific health sits inside a thin band of policy and a generic resilience strand, with little connection to performance, retention or management practice. The Well HQ, the consultancy Baz Moffat co-founded in 2021 with Dr Emma Ross and Dr Bella Smith, exists to close that gap by treating female health as part of the operating system, not the wellness budget. The consultancy now works with adidas on the Breaking Barriers Academy, with The Gym Group and The Fitness Group on training personal trainers in female-health literacy, and with national governing bodies including England Netball and English Football on changing how the sport supports women from grassroots through to elite. The same logic applies to corporates. Policy, manager training and protocols for menstruation, fertility, pregnancy, return to work and menopause are rebuilt on the science rather than on assumption. Baz brings the operator side of that argument. She rowed for Great Britain from 2005 to 2008, raced in the women’s eight at the 2007 World Rowing Championships, and spent two decades coaching women through pelvic, core and perinatal health. Her academic credentials sit in behaviour change, an MSc from Bristol on top of a First in Sports Science from Birmingham, which is why her work translates into adoption rather than slide decks. Her co-authored book, The Female Body Bible, written with an NHS GP and a former Head of Physiology at the UK Sports Institute, became an instant Sunday Times bestseller and now appears in five languages. It functions as the public version of the consultancy’s argument: that the failure to design for half the workforce is no longer defensible on cost, evidence or talent grounds. Key speaking topics Female health as an operating system inside organisations Menopause, perimenopause and the workplace Pelvic, core and perinatal health Return to work after pregnancy and postnatal recovery Female-specific high performance in sport and corporate environments Designing wellbeing policy beyond the male default Building and scaling a mission-led consultancy Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and wellbeing leads rebuilding female-health policy beyond a generic wellness offer. Boards and executive teams of sports governing bodies, federations and clubs reviewing female participation and performance pathways. Senior leaders in health, fitness and consumer brands targeting the female market. Founders and operators seeking a live case study in building a mission-led commercial business. Audience outcomes A working model for treating female health as a workforce capability, not a benefits line item. Clear language for line managers and HR on menstruation, pregnancy, postnatal return and menopause. A grounded picture of what changes when policy, manager training and protocols are redesigned on female physiology. A first-hand account of the cultural and commercial barriers to female health in sport and corporate life, and what shifts them.

Why organisations work with Ben Campagna His training combines psychology and sports sciences, both at the University of Lausanne, with applied nutrition, neurolinguistic programming and neurobiology of addiction; that mix lets him address mental and physical performance as a single system rather than two separate briefs. A decade of practitioner experience, including seven years of corporate coaching and consulting, means his material has been calibrated in one-to-one work with senior leaders before it reaches the conference stage. His background in K1 and Thai boxing at competitive level gives him first-hand authority on stress physiology and recovery that translates well to audiences used to thinking in performance terms. Keynotes are delivered in both English and French, which is useful for pan-European and Swiss-based audiences running leadership programmes in more than one language. Named corporate engagements with organisations including Philip Morris International make him a credible voice in front of large internal audiences and not only wellness-specialist rooms. Biography highlights Swiss international speaker and executive performance coach, based in Switzerland Degree in Psychology and Sports Sciences from the University of Lausanne; additional study in nutrition and sports performance at the same institution NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner (Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Los Angeles); certified Life and Motivational Coach (INEMLA, Los Angeles) More than a decade as a practitioner; seven-plus years of corporate coaching and consulting Former K1 and Thai boxing competitor; black belt in Ninjutsu Delivers sessions in English and French Biography The performance conversation most organisations need is not about motivation. It is about how to carry chronic stress for long periods without losing judgment, health or people. Ben Campagna’s work is built around that question. He is a Swiss executive performance coach and speaker who has spent more than a decade working with leaders and teams on sustainable performance under real pressure, first as a practitioner and then in front of corporate audiences. His academic base is at the University of Lausanne, with degrees in psychology and sports sciences and additional training in nutrition and sports performance. On top of that sit certifications in NLP at practitioner and master level from the Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming in Los Angeles, life and motivational coaching from INEMLA, and coursework on the neurobiology of addiction with the American Society of Addiction Medicine. The range is unusual in a wellbeing speaker and is what allows him to link psychological patterns to physical outcomes in a way clients can act on. The early career was lived in combat sports. He competed in K1 boxing and Thai boxing and holds a black belt in Ninjutsu, which gave him direct exposure to the stress, recovery and physical-preparation regimes his corporate work now draws on. His first keynote was at age 20, his first international corporate event at 24, and he has been working with senior leaders for more than seven years. Campagna’s sessions are not wellness theatre. They use specific frameworks on chronic stress, regeneration, nutrition physiology, movement and the psychology of change, and are delivered in English and French. For leadership teams, HR functions and wellbeing sponsors looking for a speaker who takes physiology as seriously as mindset, he sits in a narrow category of practitioners who can hold both ends of the conversation in one session. Key speaking topics Chronic stress, recovery and sustainable high performance Burnout prevention in corporate leadership Resilience, self-mastery and emotional regulation Nutrition, movement and their effect on cognitive performance Psychology of behaviour change in high-pressure environments Mental health and wellbeing at work Ideal for Leadership off-sites and executive programmes focused on sustainable performance rather than generic motivation HR, chief wellbeing officer and people functions building structured burnout-prevention strategy High-pressure sectors (financial services, tech, healthcare, sport) where senior teams are running hot Pan-European and bilingual audiences requiring French and English delivery Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how chronic stress operates physiologically and psychologically, and why standard wellness interventions often miss it Specific techniques for recovery, sleep, nutrition and movement that senior leaders can adopt without overhauling their schedule A working vocabulary for discussing mental health and burnout risk inside their own teams Practical steps for embedding stress-aware habits into leadership routines rather than relying on one-off programmes

Why organisations work with Ben Hanlin He has spent twenty years professionally holding the attention of audiences who did not ask to be entertained, a craft most keynote speakers approximate and never master. His engagement and rapport techniques are not theoretical. They are the working methods of a magician adapted for sales teams, client conversations and conference stages, and they were sharp enough to win Best TEDx Speaker at The Speaker Awards 2024. He is one of the few speakers who can credibly anchor a full conference day, opening with a keynote, hosting the agenda, and closing with the awards, without changing register. Major brand audiences including Google, PwC, Coca-Cola and Amplifi book him for the same reason: he reliably resets the energy of a room and gives an audience something to remember about it the next morning. The Speaker Awards 2024 triple, Speaker of the Year, Best Newcomer and Best TEDx Speaker, was judged by industry bookers on content, delivery and bookability. That combination of recognitions in a single year is rare. Biography highlights Creator, writer and star of ITV2’s hidden-camera magic series Tricked, three series broadcast 2013 to 2016. Presenter of Breaking Magic on the Discovery Channel. Series 12 finalist on ITV’s Dancing on Ice (2020), finishing fourth. Speaker of the Year, Best Newcomer and Best TEDx Speaker at The Speaker Awards 2024. TEDx London speaker, “How to Create INSTANT Engagement and Connection” (2024). Combined online following of two million plus across YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Biography Most keynote speakers learn to hold a room by stepping onto a corporate stage. Ben Hanlin learned it on the street, in pubs and on prime-time television, where the audience has not agreed in advance to pay attention and the speaker has roughly four seconds to earn it. Twenty years of working as a professional magician is, among other things, twenty years of solving that problem. That craft moved onto television with Tricked, the ITV2 hidden-camera magic series he created, wrote and presented across three series between 2013 and 2016, followed by Breaking Magic on the Discovery Channel and a fourth-place finish on series 12 of Dancing on Ice. The work travels: his combined audience across YouTube, Instagram and Facebook now sits above two million. The keynote work is a translation of the same discipline. Hanlin teaches the working methods a magician uses to create rapport, hold attention and make a message stick, applied to sales conversations, client meetings, leadership presence and the inside of a conference room. In 2024 his TEDx London talk “How to Create INSTANT Engagement and Connection” was named Best TEDx Speaker at The Speaker Awards. At the same ceremony he was also named Speaker of the Year and Best Newcomer, judged by industry bookers on content, delivery and bookability. Organisations including Google, PwC, Coca-Cola and Amplifi book him in three modes: keynote on engagement and human connection, full-day conference facilitation, and high-energy awards hosting. The common thread is the same craft applied at different scales, the ability to walk into a room of distracted people and leave it as a connected audience. Key speaking topics Engagement and human connection Instant rapport and audience attention Communication under pressure Innovation and creative confidence Resilience and dealing with failure Conference hosting and awards facilitation Ideal for Sales conferences, kick-offs and national sales meetings Awards nights and gala dinners requiring a host who can also deliver content Leadership and client-facing teams working on rapport, presence and communication Full-day conferences needing a single anchor across keynote, facilitation and after-dinner roles Audience outcomes A working set of rapport and attention techniques drawn from twenty years of professional magic, usable the next morning in client meetings. Sharper instincts for reading a room and recovering it when energy drops. A clearer sense of how to make a message land and be remembered. A shared, high-energy moment that resets the tone of the conference or sales event.

Why organisations work with Ben Saunders He holds the record for the longest human-powered polar journey in history, a 108-day, 1,795-mile round trip to the South Pole that gives every lesson he draws a specific factual anchor. His three TED main-stage talks have been viewed more than five million times, and TED describes him as a master storyteller; senior audiences leave with arguments they can repeat, not motivational impressions. His material on composure, energy management and team honesty comes from completing expeditions that defeated Scott and Shackleton, not from secondary reading or coaching frameworks. He pairs the expedition record with a working life in climate-tech investment, including Sequoia Scout status and the founding of Kintanna Ventures, so the parallels he draws to business are not theoretical. Biography highlights Led The Scott Expedition (2013 to 2014), the longest human-powered polar journey on record at 1,795 miles, completing the route that defeated both Captain Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton. Youngest person to ski solo to the geographic North Pole, spending 72 days alone on the Arctic Ocean (2004). Three TED main-stage talks (2005, 2012, 2014) with over five million combined views. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; Honorary Fellow, University of Northampton; Patron of British Exploring; Ambassador for the Scouts and The Prince’s Trust. Author of Shackleton in the Ladybird Expert series (Penguin Random House, 2017); contributor to TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris Anderson. Founder of Kintanna Ventures, a climate-technology investment vehicle, and a Sequoia Scout angel investor. Biography The Scott Expedition set out from Ross Island on 26 October 2013 and finished 108 days later, on 7 February 2014, after 1,795 miles on foot to the South Pole and back. It is the longest human-powered polar journey on record, and the first completion of the route attempted by Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton more than a century earlier. Ben Saunders led it. Saunders skied solo to the geographic North Pole in 2004 at the age of 26, the youngest person ever to do so, spending 72 days alone on the Arctic Ocean. Across two decades he has led 14 expeditions in the polar regions and covered more than 4,500 miles on foot in conditions that strip away every soft variable in performance. The material he brings to senior audiences is built from that record, not from theory. His three TED main-stage talks have been viewed over five million times and earned the unusual designation of master storyteller from TED itself. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Honorary Fellow of the University of Northampton, Patron of British Exploring and an Ambassador for the Scouts and The Prince’s Trust. His Ladybird Expert volume on Shackleton was published by Penguin Random House in 2017. The commercial life sits alongside the expedition record. Saunders raised more than $10m in sponsorship across his career, brokering multi-year partnerships with Intel, Land Rover, Canada Goose and Bremont, and now founds and runs Kintanna Ventures, a climate-technology investment vehicle, alongside angel investing as a Sequoia Scout. That working knowledge of capital allocation and venture-stage operations is what stops the polar material reading as parable when he places it in front of a board. Key speaking topics Decision-making under sustained physical and psychological pressure Composure and energy management at the limits of human capacity Team honesty and trust in small, high-stakes groups Adaptation to volatile and unforgiving operating environments Recovery and persistence after setback Climate-technology investment and the commercial reality of decarbonisation Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing prolonged operational stress or restructure CEOs, COOs and transformation leads commissioning leadership offsites on resilience and decision quality Senior teams in regulated, safety-critical or capital-intensive industries Sales kick-offs and partner conferences where the brief calls for substance over spectacle Audience outcomes A specific account of what composure looks like as a working discipline, not a personality trait A frame for separating controllable inputs from external noise when conditions deteriorate Practical examples of how small teams maintain honesty and trust through extended pressure A more credible vocabulary for talking about failure, recovery and the gap between plan and execution A fresh reference point for board-level conversations on risk, endurance and the limits of preparation

Why organisations work with Benedikt Böhm A working CEO, not a retired one. He runs an international outdoor brand and continues to ski 8,000-metre peaks, so the leadership material is current and tested, not memoir. A documented record in the most unforgiving operating environment in sport. Speed ascents of Muztagata, Gasherbrum II and Manaslu without oxygen are public, verifiable proof points for the arguments he makes about preparation, role clarity and team recovery. A peer-reviewed intellectual platform. His Routledge book with ESSEC professor Stefan Gröschl frames the work as leadership scholarship, which gives the content credibility with HR, executive development and L&D buyers who screen out motivational content. A live test case for sustainability as commercial strategy. The DYNAFIT lifetime guarantee and the Helping Band WWF partnership are operating decisions, not communications. Survivor and rescuer in the 2012 Manaslu avalanche. The account of decision-making in and after that event is one of the few first-hand executive narratives of catastrophic shock and sustained recovery. Biography highlights International Managing Director of DYNAFIT, the ski-touring brand he led from insolvency in 2003 to global category leadership. Co-author with Professor Stefan Gröschl of ESSEC Business School of “From the Death Zone to the Boardroom” (Routledge, 2019). Speed records on Muztagata (7,546m, 2005) and Gasherbrum II (8,035m, 2006) with Sebastian Haag; speed ascent and ski descent of Manaslu (8,163m, 2012) without supplemental oxygen. WWF Foundation ambassador for the Himalaya region and snow leopards. Founder of Helping Band, a wristband initiative committing approximately 60,000 euros per year to WWF. Former member of the German national ski mountaineering team. Biography DYNAFIT was effectively insolvent when Benedikt Böhm joined its marketing team in 2003. Two decades later the brand is the international category leader in ski touring, with a lifetime product guarantee and an institutional partnership with WWF that he built personally. The arc is unusual because it has been run in parallel with an active expedition career at 8,000 metres. That second career is the source of his leadership material. Speed ascents of Muztagata, Gasherbrum II and Manaslu without supplemental oxygen require a precision of role allocation, recovery management and judgement under hypoxia that ordinary corporate planning does not test for. Böhm has spent twenty years moving between the two settings, and the comparison is what makes the work substantive. His 2019 book with ESSEC professor Stefan Gröschl, “From the Death Zone to the Boardroom,” published by Routledge, is the formal statement of that work. The book sits deliberately outside the usual business-and-management canon, drawing on research into fear, pain, suffering and failure to argue that conventional models of executive resilience are too clean to describe how senior leaders actually behave under sustained pressure. The 2012 Manaslu avalanche, which killed eleven climbers and which Böhm and his climbing partner survived and helped rescue from, anchors much of the recovery and decision-making content. It is the rare case where the speaker has lived the catastrophic-shock material he discusses, and continued, after a deliberate pause, to operate at the same altitude and at the head of the same company. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme uncertainty Resilience and recovery after operational shock Team performance in high-stakes environments Risk management and the discipline of preparation Sustainability as commercial strategy Change leadership and organisational reinvention Personal performance and self-leadership at executive level Ideal for Executive committees and boards rebuilding after restructure, crisis or sustained pressure CHROs and heads of executive development designing leadership programmes with substance under the keynote CEOs and senior commercial leaders wrestling with sustainability as an operating decision rather than a communications line Senior teams preparing for major change, market entry or expedition-style strategic bets Audience outcomes A language for separating preparation, role discipline and recovery as three distinct leadership capabilities rather than one blurred idea of “resilience” A clearer view of how senior teams should behave in the first hours and days after a serious operational shock A working example of a CEO who has run sustainability as a product decision, not as a marketing position A grounded counterweight to motivational adventure content, with named expeditions, named outcomes and a named peer-reviewed text behind the argument

Why organisations work with Bernie Collins She ran race strategy at Aston Martin F1, a role that required committing several hundred engineers to a single decision in under thirty seconds, with the result televised live. Very few speakers have carried that kind of accountability. Her book with Maurice Hamilton, How to Win a Grand Prix, translates the mechanics of F1 decision making into a framework leaders can apply to their own operating rhythm. She brings a working broadcaster’s clarity. As Sky Sports F1’s strategy analyst, she explains complex trade-offs to a lay audience every race weekend, which transfers directly to boardroom and all-hands contexts. Her perspective on diversity in engineering is grounded in her own path through a male-dominated paddock, not in consultancy talking points. She is Irish, plain-spoken, and unafraid to be specific about what went wrong on a given decision. That honesty is rare in sports-adjacent keynotes. Biography highlights Former Head of Race Strategy, Aston Martin F1, 2020 to 2022. Performance and strategy engineer at Force India, Racing Point, and Aston Martin from 2015, working with Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg. Began her F1 career at McLaren in 2009 as a graduate trainee, becoming performance engineer to Jenson Button. Formula 1 strategy analyst for Sky Sports F1 and F1TV. Author of How to Win a Grand Prix: From Pit Lane to Podium with Maurice Hamilton, Quercus, 2024. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe, Manufacturing and Industry, 2016. Honorary degree from Queen’s University Belfast, 2023. Biography An F1 race strategist has around thirty seconds to recommend a tyre change that commits the team for the rest of the Grand Prix. Bernie Collins spent more than a decade in that seat, ending as Head of Race Strategy at Aston Martin F1, where she called the race at Sergio Perez’s maiden victory at the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix. Her route there ran through McLaren, where she arrived as a graduate from Queen’s University Belfast in 2009 and eventually worked trackside with Jenson Button, and then Force India, where she moved into strategy alongside Nico Hulkenberg and Perez. The team rebranded twice while she stayed in the same chair, which gave her an unusual view of how a technical organisation holds its culture together through ownership changes. What makes Collins useful to senior audiences is the structure of the F1 strategy job itself. A pit-wall call blends incomplete telemetry, weather models, competitor behaviour, and driver feedback into a single recommendation, made under time pressure, with the outcome visible on live television within minutes. In How to Win a Grand Prix, her 2024 book with journalist Maurice Hamilton, she sets out how that decision is actually made, and what organisations elsewhere tend to get wrong about it. She now works as Sky Sports F1’s strategy analyst, explaining those decisions in real time to a mass audience. The broadcaster’s discipline, saying what matters in plain language without hedging, carries into her speaking. Queen’s University Belfast awarded her an honorary degree in 2023. Key speaking topics Decision making under time pressure High-performance team culture Strategy in complex, data-rich environments Leadership in distributed technical organisations Women in engineering and motorsport Risk and safety in regulated, high-stakes settings Ideal for Executive leadership teams in fast-moving competitive markets Engineering, technology, and operations organisations Strategy, risk, and transformation functions Conferences on performance, decision making, and team culture Audience outcomes A clearer model of how high-performing teams decide when evidence is incomplete A frank look at what accountability actually feels like when your call is public Specific examples of how F1 teams align hundreds of people on a single decision in seconds A useful perspective on women in technical roles from someone who sat at the top of one

Why organisations work with Bill Benjamin He translates brain science into a practical leadership discipline the C-suite can actually use in a Monday meeting, drawing on 25 years as a senior technology leader rather than a research-only background. His Last 8% framework is the rare culture model that measures what gets left unsaid. IHHP research across more than 34,000 professionals shows an average 7.56% holdback in high-pressure moments, and that finding now anchors a September 2025 Harvard Business Review feature. He contributed to Performing Under Pressure, a New York Times and Amazon bestseller published in 65 countries, which gives his sessions a credible research spine rather than borrowed anecdotes. He has tested the material with audiences that have no patience for theory: NASA, U.S. Marines, surgeons, Goldman Sachs, Intel, and the FBI. He teaches accountability and empathy as a single leadership capability, not as opposing values, which gives HR and executive teams a shared language for the behaviours they want at the top. Biography highlights Partner, Institute for Health and Human Potential (IHHP) Contributor to Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most (Crown Business), a New York Times and Amazon bestseller Co-author with Dr. JP Pawliw-Fry of the forthcoming Last 8% Culture book Research featured in Harvard Business Review, September 2025, “The Secret to Building a High-Performing Team” Degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science, with 25 years of senior leadership experience in technology Has delivered programmes for NASA, U.S. Marines, Goldman Sachs, Intel, Coca-Cola, Mayo Clinic, Amazon, and the FBI Biography The difficult 8% of any leadership conversation is the part people avoid. It is the direct feedback that gets softened, the underperformance left unnamed, the strategic disagreement that never reaches the room. Bill Benjamin has spent two decades showing senior teams why their culture drifts when that 8% is missing, and how to build the nervous-system control that lets leaders hold it. His argument is built on measurement. IHHP research with more than 34,000 professionals finds that people hold back an average of 7.56% of what matters most in high-pressure moments, a gap that sits behind most of the strategic misses senior teams complain about. That finding anchors his September 2025 Harvard Business Review feature and the forthcoming Last 8% Culture book, co-authored with IHHP founder Dr. JP Pawliw-Fry. Bill is a partner at the Institute for Health and Human Potential and a contributor to Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most, published by Crown Business and translated into 65 territories. His credibility with technical audiences comes from a first career he rarely leads with: degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science, and 25 years as a senior leader in the technology industry. That combination is why the material lands with rooms that tend to resist behavioural content. NASA, U.S. Marines, Goldman Sachs, Intel, the FBI, and surgical teams at the Mayo Clinic have worked with him on the same question: how a leader holds their state, and their judgement, when the pressure is at its highest. Key speaking topics Build a High-Performance Last 8% Culture Leadership under pressure Emotional intelligence for senior leaders Difficult conversations and accountability Building courage and connection in executive teams Ideal for CEOs and senior executive teams rebuilding accountability after a strategic miss CHROs and CPOs redesigning leadership and culture programmes around measurable behaviour change Boards and leadership councils preparing for high-stakes transformations or succession moments Leadership conferences where the audience is senior operators rather than first-time managers Sales leadership teams applying emotional intelligence to high-pressure client and negotiation moments Audience outcomes A direct read on where their own team is holding back, and what that holdback is costing A usable model for the physiological and cognitive shifts that happen under pressure, and how to manage them in real time A shared language for pairing accountability with empathy, so executive teams stop trading one for the other Specific practices for entering the Last 8% of a conversation without the avoidance patterns most senior leaders default to Evidence from IHHP research and HBR coverage that gives HR and the CEO a credible basis for a culture intervention

Why organisations work with Bonita Norris Her “Focus Not Fret” framework gives teams a specific, repeatable mechanism for redirecting attention under pressure, from what cannot be controlled to what can. Clients at Google and Alpine cite it by name as something still in use after the event. Her trajectory from complete novice to holder of two world records in three years is structurally identical to the challenge organisations face when asking teams to achieve stretch goals from a standing start, which is why the analogy lands rather than simply inspiring. The “Data Over Dogma” keynote reframes the 1953 Everest ascent as a triumph of scientific evidence over institutional resistance, creating a bridge to data and AI audiences that most expedition speakers cannot credibly make. She is the first British woman to summit Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest mountain: a credential that goes beyond Everest and signals sustained, multi-year commitment to extreme performance, not a single peak. Winner of Best Speaker Storyteller at The Speaker Awards 2024, with verified feedback from organisations across financial services, technology, FMCG, and professional services, not a single sector cohort. Biography highlights Youngest British woman to summit Everest (2010); youngest person to reach both the summit of Everest and the North Pole First British woman to summit Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest mountain (2012) Attempted to become the first British woman to climb K2, widely regarded as the world’s most dangerous mountain Author of The Girl Who Climbed Everest (Hodder & Stoughton, 2017); Amazon No. 1 in mountaineering and adventure (2022) Winner, Best Speaker Storyteller, The Speaker Awards 2024 Appearances on BBC News, ITV’s Lorraine, and BBC World Service; featured on HSBC’s Power Up Your Goals podcast (2024) Biography The question most organisations ask after a high-pressure failure is: what went wrong with the plan? The harder question and the more useful one is: what went wrong with the mindset? Bonita Norris has spent fifteen years developing a practical answer. She began climbing at twenty, having never touched a mountain. Two years later she stood on the summit of Everest, the youngest British woman to do so. A year after that she reached the North Pole, becoming the youngest person to hold both records simultaneously. None of it was the product of innate talent. It was the product of a specific way of managing fear, uncertainty, and the pressure of stretch goals: principles she has since codified and delivered in more than 650 corporate engagements worldwide. Her framework centres on three named concepts: “Success by Smallness”: the principle that ambitious goals are won through consistent, process-driven small actions; “Mountains of the Mind”: the argument that the limiting factor is almost always cognitive, not physical; and “Focus Not Fret”: a tool for redirecting attention from what is uncontrollable to what is actionable. These are not metaphors. They are structures that clients at Google, Clifford Chance, BlackRock, and Microsoft have applied directly. Her memoir, The Girl Who Climbed Everest, published in 2017, reached No. 1 on Amazon’s mountaineering and adventure chart in 2022. In 2024 she was awarded Best Speaker Storyteller at The Speaker Awards, recognition grounded in a consistent record of audience engagement across industries, not a single standout performance. Key speaking topics Resilience and mindset under pressure High performance in high-stakes environments Goal-setting and stretch ambition Overcoming fear and cognitive limitation Team cohesion and shared-goal culture Marginal gains and process-driven performance Data, evidence, and overcoming institutional resistance to change Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating high-pressure transformation or uncertainty Sales and commercial organisations working toward stretch targets CHROs and L&D leads designing resilience or performance programmes All-hands and conference audiences where cross-functional alignment and shared motivation are the goal Audience outcomes A named, portable framework – “Focus Not Fret” – for managing attention and decision-making under pressure Clearer understanding of why ambitious goals fail at the mindset level, and what specifically to do about it A reframed relationship with failure: practical insight into how mistakes accelerate rather than derail progress Greater awareness of how small, consistent actions – not heroic moments – produce exceptional results over time A shared reference point for team culture conversations around resilience, ambition, and collective performance