Peak Performance

Why organisations work with James Benson-King He has tested resilience claims under conditions that almost no corporate audience has access to: a 32,000km solo ride from Alaska to Argentina, ultra-endurance racing, and a Guinness-ratified ascent from sea level to the world’s highest road in 14 days. His corporate finance background, ten years inside JP Morgan’s Investment Banking Operations, means he translates the physical lessons into the language and pressures senior commercial audiences actually recognise. The childhood cardiac story is genuine, not staged inspiration. It connects directly to his work with Cardiac Risk in the Young and gives the resilience material a clinical and personal foundation that other endurance speakers do not have. He talks about decision-making under exhaustion, not motivation. Audiences leave with material on what to do when the conditions for good thinking have already gone. Biography highlights Former Vice President, Investment Banking Operations, JP Morgan Guinness World Record holder: fastest ascent, Khambhat to Umling La Pass by standard bicycle (June 2025, ratified by WUCA) Completed a 32,000km solo cycle from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina, raising funds for Cardiac Risk in the Young Lead figure in “Pedal The Impossible”, a planned solo unsupported cycle to the South Pole Brand partner of GOREWEAR and Restrap; published rider features with both Public profile under “The Biking Viking”, with documentary-style video coverage of his ultra-endurance attempts Biography The hardest part of an ultra-endurance ride is rarely the terrain. It is what happens to judgement after weeks of broken sleep, cold, and physical decline. That is the territory James Benson-King has spent the last several years inside, and the territory that gives his speaking material its weight. A childhood heart condition, with two operations before he turned seventeen, set the original frame. It is also the reason his cycling work is tied to Cardiac Risk in the Young, the charity behind his 32,000km Alaska to Argentina ride beginning in 2022. He cycled from Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia through fifteen countries, including a 900km stretch ridden on one leg. The corporate context is real and recent. He spent close to a decade at JP Morgan, reaching Vice President in Investment Banking Operations. That background shapes how he speaks to senior commercial audiences: he understands quarterly pressure, operational decision-making, and what resilience language sounds like when it is empty. In June 2025 he set a Guinness World Record for the fastest ascent from Khambhat at sea level to Umling La Pass at 5,800m, completing 2,100km and 17,595m of climbing in 14 days, 4 hours, 25 minutes, ratified by the World Ultra Cycling Association. His current project, Pedal The Impossible, is an attempt to become the first person to cycle solo and unsupported to the South Pole. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained pressure Decision-making in fatigue and uncertainty Mental health for high performers Goal-setting and execution over multi-year horizons Recovery from physical and personal setbacks Performance under extreme conditions Ideal for Sales and trading leadership teams managing prolonged commercial pressure Operations and transformation leaders running multi-year change programmes HR and wellbeing leads building substantive resilience content for senior populations Off-site keynotes for leadership groups requiring lived rather than theoretical resilience material Audience outcomes A direct account of how decisions degrade under exhaustion, and what to protect first Specific, repeatable practices used by ultra-endurance athletes that translate into commercial settings A frank perspective on mental health from someone who built a career on physical risk A reference point that audiences carry into their own difficult periods, anchored in named events rather than abstractions

Why organisations work with Amanda Hamilton A clinical nutrition practitioner who can hold a corporate audience. The combination of qualified therapist credentials and 25 years of mainstream BBC presenting is what allows her to land technical content on gut health, fasting and longevity without losing the room. Genuine subject authority on women’s mid-life health, an area most wellbeing programmes underserve. The Women’s Reset programme is built specifically around women aged 40+, the cohort employers are most often losing. A bestselling thesis on the gut-health-and-weight relationship, The G Plan Diet, that pre-dated the mainstream gut microbiome conversation and is still in print. Practical, non-dogmatic translation of biohacking, fasting and longevity science. Audiences leave with things they can actually do on Monday, not a manifesto. Biography highlights Nutritional therapist with 25+ years’ practice; member of the British Association of Nutritional Therapists and associate member of the Royal Society of Medicine. Co-host of the BBC’s Something for the Weekend with Tim Lovejoy and Simon Rimmer, and presenter on How to Live Longer, The Truth About… and The Spa of Embarrassing Illnesses. Author of The G Plan Diet (2017, with Hannah Ebelthite), Eat, Fast, Slim (Watkins, 2013), Life-Changing Weight Loss (Piatkus, 2008) and LifeDetox (Piatkus, 2007). Founder of The Women’s Reset, an app-based programme on nutrition, exercise, mindset and healthcare for women aged 40+. Currently pursuing an MSc in Obesity Science at Robert Gordon University. Past corporate and consulting work spans Marbella Club, MyFitnessPal, Nairns and OakNorth, alongside Harley Street longevity practice. Biography Most corporate wellness content fails the credibility test the moment a clinically literate employee asks a follow-up question. Amanda Hamilton has built a 25-year career on the opposite premise: that workforce audiences will engage seriously with nutrition, longevity and gut health, but only when the speaker can hold the science as well as the room. Her clinical grounding sits with the British Association of Nutritional Therapists and the Royal Society of Medicine, and she is currently pursuing an MSc in Obesity Science at Robert Gordon University. Her broadcast career, including years co-hosting the BBC’s Something for the Weekend and presenting How to Live Longer, taught her how to make that science conversational without watering it down. The G Plan Diet, published in 2017 with Hannah Ebelthite, brought the gut-weight relationship into the mainstream conversation before the microbiome became a wellness category in its own right. Earlier books with Piatkus and Watkins covered fasting, weight loss and detox protocols, work she has since extended through retreats, the Women’s Reset programme for women aged 40+, and Harley Street longevity practice. For corporate audiences this resolves a familiar problem. Wellbeing programmes lose authority when they over-promise; they lose engagement when they under-deliver. She works in the narrow band between clinical caution and practical usefulness, which is why she lands well with mid-life cohorts that have heard the generic version too many times. Key speaking topics Nutrition and gut health Longevity and healthspan Women’s mid-life health and menopause Corporate wellbeing and workforce vitality Fasting and metabolic health Biohacking and human optimisation Ideal for Heads of HR, reward and benefits, and wellbeing leads designing or refreshing employee health programmes Companies focused on retaining and supporting women aged 40+, including senior female talent Health, hospitality and wellness brands seeking a clinically credible voice on consumer-facing nutrition Audience outcomes A clearer view of which workplace health interventions are evidence-backed and which are not A practical understanding of how nutrition, sleep and fasting protocols affect energy and performance A more informed conversation about women’s mid-life health that goes beyond menopause headlines Specific, lifestyle-level changes employees can apply without needing a clinical referral

Why organisations work with Mark Denton Lived authority on leading mixed-ability teams under continuous pressure for ten months at sea, not a borrowed metaphor or a single-event story. Translates that experience into named diagnostic frameworks (Navig-8, CULTIV-8, COLLABOR-8, DOMIN-8) that boards and exec teams can actually use after the keynote. Carries a 20-year consulting practice through MAXVMG, so the room is being addressed by someone who works inside organisations, not only on stage. Licensed partner of Amy Edmondson’s Fearless Organisation Scan, which gives him a defensible position on psychological safety alongside the resilience material. Voted Bookers Choice at the 2024 Speaker Awards by the agents who buy speakers for a living, a sharper signal than self-reported ratings. Biography highlights Skippered BP in the BT Global Challenge round-the-world yacht race with an amateur crew, finishing on the podium. Founder of MAXVMG, an organisational development consultancy focused on leadership, team performance and change. Bookers Choice winner at the 2024 Speaker Awards, voted by booking agents. Licensed partner of Amy Edmondson’s Fearless Organisation Scan, the psychological safety diagnostic developed at Harvard Business School. Contributor to Inspiring Leadership: Staying Afloat in Turbulent Times, the Henley Management College text by Cranwell-Ward, Bacon and Mackie on emotional intelligence and sustained performance. IVCA Gold Award recipient for speaking; accredited executive and team coach. Biography The BT Global Challenge sent twelve identical yachts the wrong way around the world, with crews of mostly first-time sailors, for ten months at sea. BP’s entry, skippered by Mark Denton, finished on the podium. The relevant material for senior leaders is not the race itself, it is what running that team for that long under those conditions teaches a leader about decisions, conflict and recovery. Denton has spent the twenty years since converting that experience into a working consulting practice. Through MAXVMG, his organisation development firm, he advises leadership teams on performance, culture and change. His sessions sit on top of structured frameworks (Navig-8 for resilience, CULTIV-8 for culture, COLLABOR-8 for team dynamics, DOMIN-8 for performance) that give clients something to use after the lights go up. The intellectual ballast comes from two sources. He contributed to the Henley Management College text Inspiring Leadership: Staying Afloat in Turbulent Times, which examined emotional intelligence and sustained performance. He is also a licensed partner of Amy Edmondson’s Fearless Organisation Scan, the psychological safety diagnostic developed at Harvard Business School. The combination gives his work on team performance an academic spine that most experiential speakers do not have. In 2024 he was voted Bookers Choice at the Speaker Awards, an industry vote by the agents who place speakers for a living. That is a useful signal in a crowded leadership-from-adversity category, where lived experience without operational substance is the failure mode. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained pressure High-performance team dynamics Resilience and recovery in volatile conditions Leading change with mixed-ability teams Decision-making under uncertainty Psychological safety in performance cultures Performance culture and accountability Ideal for CEOs and executive teams entering an extended period of operational pressure or transformation. HR and people directors building resilience and psychological safety capability across senior populations. Leadership development and talent functions investing in mixed-ability or cross-functional team performance. Sales, operations and project leaders running high-stakes programmes where the team has to perform for sustained periods without burning out. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how leadership behaviour shifts when conditions stay difficult for months, not days. A vocabulary for diagnosing team dysfunction (the Navig-8, COLLABOR-8 and DOMIN-8 frameworks) that leaders can take back into their own meetings. A sharper sense of the link between psychological safety and performance, grounded in Edmondson’s research. Specific examples of how amateur teams outperformed expectations, and what senior leaders can borrow from those mechanics. Practical reset points for leaders going into a period of prolonged uncertainty.

Key speaking topics Solo offshore racing Round-the-world sailing Resilience in extreme environments High-performance sailing teams Decision-making under pressure Endurance and isolation at sea Professional offshore racing campaigns Ideal for Leadership teams Sales and high-performance teams Organisations navigating change or uncertainty Corporate conferences and industry events Audience outcomes Insight into managing risk and uncertainty in high-stakes environments. Practical lessons from solo leadership and accountability. Clear perspectives on endurance, preparation, and performance under pressure. Understanding of teamwork dynamics in professional offshore racing. Why organisations work with Cole Brauer Brings first-hand experience of competing in a solo, non-stop round-the-world race. Offers practical insights drawn from professional offshore racing campaigns. Connects extreme performance environments to business leadership and resilience. Recognised by national sailing bodies and international racing teams. Biography Cole Brauer is recognised internationally for her achievement in solo, non-stop round-the-world ocean racing. She finished second overall in the inaugural Global Solo Challenge, becoming the first American woman to complete a solo, non-stop, unassisted circumnavigation and earning recognition for a Class40 solo non-stop speed record. Her campaign combined technical precision, strategic risk management and sustained performance across more than four months alone at sea. The race drew significant global attention and built a substantial international following, positioning her as a prominent figure in modern offshore sailing. Brauer’s offshore career includes skippering the Class40 First Light and winning the Bermuda One-Two Yacht Race overall, widely reported as a first for a woman skipper in the event’s history. Her achievements were further recognised with US Sailing’s Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year award. Beyond solo racing, she competes at the highest level of professional offshore sailing as a co-skipper with Team Malizia. Her experience spans solo endurance, short-handed racing and crewed international campaigns, providing a rare perspective on leadership, accountability and performance under sustained pressure. For organisations, Brauer brings direct insight from one of the most demanding environments in sport. Her experience navigating isolation, uncertainty and high-stakes decision-making at sea translates into practical lessons for senior leaders, commercial teams and high-growth organisations operating in complex and competitive markets.

Why organisations work with Robby Kojetin A first-person account of recovery that holds up to scrutiny: 928 days from operating table to the summit of Everest, with the rebuild documented in two published books, not a single anecdote stretched across an hour. A working framework, Define, Decide, Deliver, that translates expedition discipline into how senior people make calls under pressure rather than freeze or default to old plans. Credibility as the 17th South African to summit Everest, ten Kilimanjaro summits, and a K2 attempt halted by helicopter evacuation at 5,000 metres. The expeditions are real, not décor. A delivery register that suits serious corporate audiences. Past clients include Deloitte, Pfizer, Mastercard, Standard Bank, Nedbank, Liberty, GSK and Wits Business School, across keynote and executive-education formats. Biography highlights 17th South African to summit Mount Everest, 2009. Author of Mind Over Mountain: A Mental and Physical Climb to the Top (Jonathan Ball Publishers, international edition ISBN 9781789561050). Co-author of Parallel Summits: Mastering the Art of Money with financial planner Thys van Zyl. Ten Kilimanjaro summits, five of the Seven Summits, first South African team member to summit Ama Dablam. Keynote and executive-education work for Deloitte, Pfizer, Mastercard, Standard Bank, Nedbank, FNB, GSK, Medtronic, LEGO, Volkswagen SA, Wits Business School and the Gordon Institute of Business Science. Ironman triathlon finisher; team leader on more than one hundred mountaineering expeditions. Biography A simple mistake at an indoor climbing gym in 2006 broke both of Robby Kojetin’s ankles and put a 28-year-old aspiring mountaineer in a wheelchair for the best part of a year. Nine hundred and twenty-eight days after leaving the operating table, he stood on the summit of Mount Everest as the 17th South African to have done so. The interesting part is what happened in between. Kojetin’s keynote work is built on the discipline of that rebuild rather than the drama of the summit. Recovery, in his framing, is not a private mental health story. It is a question of how a leader reassembles the capacity to define what now matters, decide under conditions that have shifted, and deliver without burning out the people around them. The framework he uses with corporate audiences, Define, Decide, Deliver, comes directly from the expedition logic of operating in environments where the original plan no longer applies. The published record matters. Mind Over Mountain: A Mental and Physical Climb to the Top, his account of the accident, the recovery and the climb, was first issued by Jonathan Ball Publishers and later in an international paperback edition. He has since co-authored Parallel Summits: Mastering the Art of Money with financial planner Thys van Zyl, applying the same logic to long-horizon decisions about capital. Two books, one consistent argument: the work that determines outcomes happens before the visible climb begins. Beyond Everest, the expedition CV does heavy lifting in front of senior audiences. Ten Kilimanjaro summits, five of the Seven Summits, an aborted K2 attempt that ended with a helicopter evacuation at five thousand metres, and the first South African team summit of Ama Dablam. Corporate clients including Deloitte, Pfizer, Mastercard, Standard Bank, Nedbank and Wits Business School book him for the keynote, not the climb. Key speaking topics Resilience after shock Self-leadership and composure under pressure Decision-making in disrupted conditions Long-horizon goal setting for senior teams Team accountability on extended efforts Personal recovery and return to performance Ideal for C-suite leadership conferences where the team is in the middle of, or emerging from, a significant disruption. HR, talent and L&D leaders designing senior leadership development around resilience and decision-making. Sales and commercial kick-offs where the room needs a credible reset on persistence and execution discipline. Partner and senior associate audiences in professional services firms (consulting, audit, law) running multi-year client mandates. Audience outcomes A clear sense of what changes in a leader’s decision-making after a setback, and what to do about it. The Define, Decide, Deliver structure applied to a current organisational pressure point, not as a generic motivational message. Language for talking about recovery and composure that senior leaders can actually use with their own teams. A reset on goal-setting horizons that distinguishes between summit thinking and the daily decisions that determine whether the summit is reached.

Why organisations work with Max Garcia A rare first-hand account of command at scale: responsibility for more than 1,500 Marines in an operational battalion, drawn on directly when speaking to leaders running large frontline workforces. Combat-tested perspective on decision-making under pressure, including involvement in the 2012 Benghazi consulate response and combat tours in Iraq, used to make composure a teachable skill rather than a personality trait. A practical sales and influence framework grounded in body language, credibility-building and referral generation, distinct from the leadership keynote and useful for commercial teams. Recognised by named senior figures, including the Medal for Valor presented by General James Mattis, giving the leadership material a verifiable institutional anchor. Written work as Amazon #1 best-selling co-author with Joe Vitale gives organisations a published reference point alongside the keynote. Biography highlights Sergeant Major, US Marine Corps (selected 2014), retired 2019 after 25 years of service. Combat Action Ribbon, Iraq 2003 and 2004; Medal for Valor presented by General James Mattis. Served with Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team (FAST) Company Europe; coordinated response activity during the 2012 Benghazi consulate attack. Officer Candidate instructor, University of South Florida, 2006 to 2009. Amazon #1 best-selling co-author with Joe Vitale, contributor to The Secret. Speaking client base spans Members of Parliament, NRL clubs including The Wests Tigers, professional golfers, corporate audiences and universities across the US and Australia. Biography A Marine sergeant major spends a career making the kind of decisions most organisations only model in tabletop exercises. Max Garcia spent 25 years doing it, including two tours in Iraq, deployments to Afghanistan and Europe, and command of an operational battalion of more than 1,500 personnel. His material is built from those decisions, not adapted from them. He enlisted in 1994, served as a drill instructor and Officer Candidate instructor at the University of South Florida, and joined Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team Company Europe, where he was involved in coordinating the response during the 2012 Benghazi consulate attack. In 2014 he was selected to Sergeant Major, the top enlisted rank in the Corps. General James Mattis presented him with the Medal for Valor. For senior leaders, the value is the translation. Composure under pressure, loyalty inside a unit, and the ability to keep a large team functioning when conditions deteriorate are usually discussed as personality traits. Garcia treats them as practices that can be taught, and he draws directly on named operational moments to teach them. He is also Amazon #1 best-selling co-author with Joe Vitale, contributor to The Secret. He speaks across the US and Australia to Members of Parliament, NRL teams, professional golfers, universities and corporate audiences, having travelled to all 50 US states and more than 70 countries. Key speaking topics Leadership under operational pressure Resilience and personal performance Loyalty and team cohesion Confidence and self-belief Sales, influence and credibility Goal achievement and execution Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership offsites in high-stakes industries Frontline operational leaders running large workforces Sales leadership teams looking for a credibility and influence framework Conferences seeking a keynote on resilience grounded in named military command, not generic motivation Audience outcomes A practical view of composure as a learnable command skill, not a fixed personality trait Concrete language for building loyalty inside a team during periods of strain A repeatable approach to confidence, drawn from Garcia’s own progression from adopted child to Sergeant Major A 30-point sales and influence framework covering body language, subconscious cues, credibility and referrals Decision-making cues calibrated to high-consequence environments

Why organisations work with Noah St. John He owns a named, trademarked methodology, AFFORMATIONS, that gives leadership audiences a concrete cognitive tool rather than abstract mindset language. His Power Habits framework targets the unconscious patterns behind executive decision-making, an angle most leadership content treats as out of scope. He is one of very few authors with books carried by HarperCollins, Hay House, Simon and Schuster, Mindvalley, and Nightingale-Conant, a catalogue that reflects sustained editorial credibility across mainstream, business, and personal development publishing. He has built a body of work specifically for leaders trying to translate self-awareness into changed behaviour, which is the gap most senior development programmes leave open. Biography highlights PhD in Pastoral Counseling Psychology; founder and CEO of SuccessClinic.com since 1997. Creator of AFFORMATIONS, a trademarked questioning-based method, and the Power Habits System. Author of 27 books translated into 18 languages, including Power Habits (Nightingale-Conant), The Book of Afformations, and Get Rid of Your Head Trash About Money. Published by HarperCollins, Hay House, Simon and Schuster, Mindvalley, Nightingale-Conant, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul publisher. TEDx speaker: «Done with Head Trash: A New Way to Think About Thinking» (TEDxMizner, Boca Raton). Media appearances and features across ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Parade, SUCCESS Magazine, and Entrepreneur. Biography Most leadership development assumes the bottleneck is knowledge. Senior leaders almost always know what good looks like. The harder problem is that decisions, energy, and recovery under pressure run on internal scripts that were never deliberately chosen, and rarely change through more information. Noah St. John has spent nearly three decades inside that gap. In 1997 he coined AFFORMATIONS, a method that replaces traditional affirmation with empowering questions designed to bypass the brain’s habitual rejection of unearned positive statements. The technique is now trademarked and forms the spine of his Power Habits System, a framework aimed at the unconscious patterns that govern how high performers behave when stretched. His written work spans 27 books in 18 languages, with editorial homes at HarperCollins, Hay House, Simon and Schuster, Mindvalley, Nightingale-Conant, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul publisher. Power Habits, his Nightingale-Conant title, sets out the operating model. Get Rid of Your Head Trash About Money applies it to the financial decisions and self-talk that quietly shape leader behaviour. He holds a PhD in Pastoral Counseling Psychology and runs SuccessClinic.com as its founder and CEO. His TEDx talk, «Done with Head Trash: A New Way to Think About Thinking,» compresses the argument: knowledge alone does not change behaviour, but a better question often does. Key speaking topics AFFORMATIONS and the cognitive science of empowering questions Power Habits for executive performance Self-talk, decision quality, and the unconscious mind Sales mindset and revenue performance Leadership under pressure and personal resilience Mindset and the human side of AI adoption Ideal for CEOs, founders, and senior operators looking to translate self-awareness into changed behaviour Sales leadership and high-performing revenue teams Leadership development programmes that want a behavioural-change tool, not another conceptual framework Conferences seeking a peak-performance keynote with a named, owned methodology Audience outcomes A working knowledge of AFFORMATIONS as a daily cognitive practice, with the mechanics for applying it A clearer view of which unconscious habits are driving current decisions and results Specific shifts in self-talk language that audiences can take into the next week of work A sharper read on the gap between what they intend as leaders and how they actually behave under load

Why organisations work with Dominic Colenso The IMPACT framework (six elements of confident communication) and the Six Ds (Discover, Distil, Design, Drill, Deliver, Debrief) give organisations a named, repeatable method for high-stakes communication. The same toolkit scales from graduate intake to executive committee. Dominic trained as a director at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and starred opposite Sir Ben Kingsley in the Hollywood remake of Thunderbirds. The acting techniques he teaches in the room are the ones he was paid to use professionally on screen and on the stages of The National Theatre and The Royal Court. He is unusually effective with the audience most communication coaching fails: detail-focused subject matter experts in technology, finance and professional services who command technical credibility and need to convert it into commercial influence. He has been the lead public speaking coach for the NextGen Planners Speaker & Influencer programme for five years, training over five hundred financial services professionals across multiple cohorts. The senior-coaching track record is documented at scale, not anecdotal. The method has its own distribution. His YouTube channel on communication and pitching has accumulated over 2.5 million views, and audiences frequently arrive at keynotes already familiar with the frameworks. Biography highlights Played Virgil Tracy in the 2004 Hollywood remake of Thunderbirds, opposite Bill Paxton and Sir Ben Kingsley. Trained as a director at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; subsequently taught acting at RADA, Drama Centre London and Guildford School of Acting. Author of IMPACT (Rethink Press) and Cut-Through: The Pitch and Presentation Playbook (Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2025). Founder and Head Performance Coach of In Flow Training; lead public speaking coach for the NextGen Planners Speaker & Influencer programme. Performed at The National Theatre and The Royal Court; on screen in BBC period dramas and feature film. Delivered the TEDx talk “The Power of Telling Your Story” at TEDxVitoriaGasteiz; host of the Why Life’s A Pitch podcast; contributor to Big Think and Entrepreneur UK. Biography When the 2004 Hollywood remake of Thunderbirds went to camera, Bill Paxton played Jeff Tracy and Sir Ben Kingsley played The Hood. Virgil Tracy, the brother who pilots Thunderbird 2, was a 22-year-old Dominic Colenso. The discipline he absorbed on that set, and on the stages of The National Theatre and The Royal Court, is the foundation of his current work. Most communication training works in adjectives. Be confident. Be clear. The actor’s craft works in mechanics: what the voice does under pressure, how the eyes hold a room, how a story is structured so it lands in the time available. Two books distil that craft into frameworks organisations can apply without a drama degree. IMPACT (Rethink Press) sets out six elements of confident communication. Cut-Through (Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2025) walks through the Six Ds of pitch and presentation: Discover, Distil, Design, Drill, Deliver, Debrief. The audience best served by this method is the one most communication coaching struggles with. Technical experts in finance, technology and professional services are paid for the depth of their knowledge, then asked to compress it for a board, a client, or a 200-person sales kick-off. Dominic has been the lead public speaking coach for the NextGen Planners Speaker & Influencer programme for five years, training over five hundred financial services professionals across cohorts. Other named clients include John Lewis, Capita, Kerry Group, Paysafe and the National Sales Conference. Beyond the keynote and coaching work, the method has its own distribution. His YouTube channel has accumulated over 2.5 million views on communication and pitching content. The Why Life’s A Pitch podcast interviews business and creative figures, including Daniel Priestley, about how they used storytelling to get where they are. The 2017 TEDx talk “The Power of Telling Your Story” remains in active circulation, including on US college course reading lists. Key speaking topics High-stakes communication Pitch and presentation craft Sales storytelling Executive presence and gravitas On-camera communication Leadership communication under pressure Translating technical depth into commercial influence Ideal for Sales leadership and revenue teams preparing for high-stakes pitches, kick-offs and renewal conversations. Senior leaders preparing keynotes, town halls or investor presentations where the room matters. Heads of L&D and CHROs investing in communication and presence as part of leadership development. Subject matter experts in finance, technology and professional services who need to convert depth into influence. Audience outcomes A named six-step method for designing and rehearsing any high-stakes pitch or presentation. Specific physical and vocal techniques for holding attention and composure when the stakes are highest. A structured approach to distilling complex or technical material into messages an audience can act on. A shared vocabulary for giving and receiving feedback on communication, so the gains continue after the session.

Key speaking topics Formula 1 race strategy Data-driven decision-making High-performance teamwork Leading under pressure Engineering excellence in elite sport Women in motorsport and engineering Real-time risk assessment Ideal for Executive leadership teams Strategy and operations leaders Engineering and technical organisations Diversity and inclusion programmes in STEM sectors Audience outcomes Clear understanding of how race strategy is built from live data and scenario planning Insight into decision-making under extreme time pressure Practical perspectives on teamwork in elite performance environments Greater awareness of pathways into engineering and motorsport Why organisations work with Ruth Buscombe Direct experience of strategic decision-making at the highest level of global sport Ability to translate complex technical environments into clear business-relevant lessons Experience working across multiple Formula 1 teams Credible advocate for diversity in engineering and high-performance industries Biography Ruth Buscombe brings frontline Formula 1 strategy experience to organisations seeking sharper decision-making in high-performance environments. Her career spans race strategy and engineering roles with Ferrari, Haas and Sauber, where she held senior strategy responsibilities within a team that achieved a sixth-place Constructors’ Championship finish. Working at the heart of Formula 1, she has operated in data-intensive, time-critical settings where decisions are made live and outcomes are immediate. Her expertise lies in translating complex data into clear strategic calls, aligning technical teams under pressure, and executing race plans in dynamic and unpredictable conditions. A first-class engineering graduate of the University of Cambridge, her academic work included a master’s thesis on Drag Reduction System conducted in conjunction with the FIA. This technical foundation underpins her structured approach to problem-solving, risk assessment and performance optimisation. Beyond the pit wall, Ruth serves as an on-air strategy analyst for F1 TV, providing expert insight into race dynamics and decision-making at the highest level of global sport. She is also an ambassador for Dare to be Different, supporting initiatives that encourage greater participation of women in engineering and motorsport. For corporate audiences, Ruth offers a rare perspective on strategy execution, teamwork and leadership drawn from one of the most competitive and technologically advanced arenas in the world.

Why organisations work with David Atkins Twenty-two years commanding New York State Police operations across Westchester County, including a Ground Zero deployment and incident command at the 2020 US Open at Winged Foot, give him direct authority on decision-making when the stakes are real New York State Trooper of the Year (2003) and New York State Investigator of the Year (2007) are named credentials from a credible body, not bureau adjectives The “One Decision Away” framework gives audiences a structured Assess, Address, Act sequence they can apply the next morning, not a story without a takeaway He pairs command experience with a documented commercial track record, having built a 1,400-person direct sales organisation into the top 0.5% of his company, which lets him speak credibly to sales floors as well as leadership rooms Biography highlights Retired Captain, New York State Police, 22 years of service Commanded all NYSP operations for Westchester County, overseeing reported 400,000 to 500,000 annual 911 calls New York State Trooper of the Year, 2003 New York State Investigator of the Year, 2007 Ground Zero first responder, 11 September 2001 Incident Commander, 2020 USGA US Open at Winged Foot Golf Club Author, “The Leveled Up Life: The No Excuse Blueprint to Live Up to Your Fullest Potential” Biography Most leadership content about pressure is written by people who have read about it. Atkins commanded New York State Police operations for Westchester County for more than two decades, with reported call volumes of close to half a million 911 incidents a year. The decisions were live, the consequences immediate, and the audience for those decisions was the public. That operational record sits behind his keynote work. He was a Ground Zero first responder on 11 September 2001, ran undercover units against organised crime and trafficking, and served as Incident Commander for the 2020 US Open at Winged Foot Golf Club. He was named New York State Trooper of the Year in 2003 and New York State Investigator of the Year in 2007. After retiring from law enforcement, Atkins built a 1,400-person international direct sales organisation through Beachbody, reaching the top 0.5% of the company by earnings. The commercial track record matters because it shows the same decision-making pattern applied outside a command environment, which is why sales and revenue audiences book him alongside leadership programmes. His book, “The Leveled Up Life: The No Excuse Blueprint to Live Up to Your Fullest Potential”, sets out the “One Decision Away” framework he uses on stage: Assess the single decision creating maximum momentum, Address the obstacle, Act with public commitment. The framework is the through-line buyers can point to when they need a keynote that leaves a structured takeaway rather than an emotional one. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Resilience and stress management Leadership in high-stakes environments Sales performance and direct selling discipline Personal accountability and the “One Decision Away” framework First responder leadership lessons Ideal for Sales kick-offs and revenue conferences looking for credibility on personal performance Leadership programmes for line managers and frontline supervisors who carry decision risk First responder, healthcare and public safety audiences HR, talent and SHRM-style audiences focused on resilience and engagement Audience outcomes A named decision-making sequence (Assess, Address, Act) audiences can take into the next working week Concrete examples of command-level decision-making from policing, 9/11 response and major event security A reframed view of what counts as an “excuse” inside their own teams Practical language for talking about composure and accountability without slipping into wellness clichés

Why organisations work with Darren Edwards He has led injured-veteran teams across four genuine world-first or world-record expeditions, including the 1,400 km Land’s End to John O’Groats kayak and the seven-continent World Marathon Challenge in a wheelchair. The leadership content is drawn from operations, not theory. He talks about the South Pole expedition that did not finish as openly as the ones that did, which gives senior teams a rare working example of how to make a collective stop call without losing the team. His book Strength Through Adversity, an Amazon UK bestseller, sets out the adaptive mindset framework he uses with leadership teams, giving audiences a single referenceable text after a session. He founded Adaptive Expeditions, so the work is institutional rather than personal narrative, and translates into language about team capability, not individual triumph. Biography highlights Author of Strength Through Adversity, Amazon UK bestseller, published February 2023. First wheelchair user to complete the World Marathon Challenge: seven marathons, seven continents, seven days. Led the first team to kayak 1,400 km from Land’s End to John O’Groats with injured-veteran crew. Member of the first adaptive team to cross Vatnajokull, Europe’s largest ice cap. Founder of Adaptive Expeditions. Former Army Reservist and qualified teacher. Biography A ledge gave way in North Wales in 2016. Darren Edwards fell more than 100 feet, broke his back in two places, and severed his spinal cord. He woke up paralysed from the chest down. He had been a mountaineer, an Army Reservist, and a trained teacher. None of those identities survived intact. What followed is the working material of his keynote. Inside three years he was leading a team of injured veterans on the first kayak crossing of Britain from Land’s End to John O’Groats, 1,400 kilometres through some of the country’s most exposed sea. He went on to row the English Channel, cross the Vatnajokull ice cap with the first adaptive team to do it, and in 2023 became the first wheelchair user to finish the World Marathon Challenge: seven marathons, seven continents, seven days. The expeditions are not the proof point. The proof point is what he did with them. He built Adaptive Expeditions as an organisation, wrote Strength Through Adversity in 2023, and has spent the years since refining what he calls the adaptive mindset: a working set of disciplines for leading teams through sustained uncertainty. How composure is built before it is needed. How recovery is led rather than waited out. How a team makes the call to stop. In December 2025 his Redefining Impossible team cut a 222 km sit-ski attempt on the South Pole short after a week on the ice. He talks about that decision with the same clarity as the records. For organisations under sustained pressure, that is the value. Edwards has lived the gap between the plan and what actually happens, and he can describe it in operational terms. Key speaking topics The adaptive mindset for leadership teams Leading through sustained uncertainty Team leadership across injured and mixed-ability crews Composure and decision-making under pressure Recovery as a leadership discipline Resilience after catastrophic disruption Ideal for Executive leadership teams preparing for or recovering from major disruption Senior operational leaders responsible for sustained-pressure environments Programmes for high-potential leaders building decision-making range Veteran transition, healthcare leadership, and emergency-services audiences Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about composure and recovery as leadership capabilities, not personality traits A clear example of how a senior team makes a collective stop decision without losing trust The adaptive mindset framework, drawn from his book, that audiences can take into team conversations after the session An honest account of the gap between the plan and the operation, useful for risk and contingency thinking

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