Peak Performance

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

Karl Dickson is a distinguished former professional rugby player who has transitioned into a successful career as a referee and motivational speaker. Known for his tactical intelligence and leadership skills, Karl’s journey from playing for Harlequins to officiating at the highest levels of rugby provides a rich foundation for his engaging and insightful speaking engagements. Rugby career During his playing career with Harlequins, Karl Dickson was celebrated for his strategic prowess and on-field leadership. His contributions were pivotal in many key matches and tournaments, showcasing his ability to perform under pressure and guide his team to success. Transition to refereeing After retiring from playing, Karl smoothly transitioned into refereeing, quickly establishing himself as a respected official in Premiership and international rugby. His unique perspective as both a former player and current referee enables him to offer valuable insights into performance, decision-making, and the nuances of the game. Karl Dickson continues to inspire and educate through his speaking engagements, leveraging his extensive rugby experience and officiating expertise to deliver powerful messages on leadership, resilience, and peak performance. His talks provide valuable lessons that transcend the world of sports, offering actionable insights for personal and professional growth.

Why organisations work with Jack Burnell He speaks from the inside of a public failure most leaders only read about: disqualified at Rio 2016 on the finish line, then open about the nightmares and depression that followed. He currently coaches Premier League footballers at Brentford FC on performing in the hardest sustained-pressure environment in European sport, so the material is live, not retrospective. He can translate the texture of elite competition, the silent weeks of preparation, the seconds in which a career-defining decision goes wrong, into language that senior teams recognise from their own work. His credibility is earned rather than claimed: GB’s first named Olympic quota place for the Rio open-water 10km, 2016 European silver, 2017 Abu Dhabi FINA World Cup gold. He is precise about what he is and is not: a performance mindset coach, not a clinical psychologist, which is the right framing for a corporate audience that wants applied insight rather than therapeutic content. Biography highlights Represented Great Britain at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in the 10km open-water marathon swim. Secured GB’s first named quota place for the Rio 2016 Olympic open-water event at the 2015 Kazan World Championships. Silver medal, 10km, 2016 European Open Water Swimming Championships. Gold medal, 2017 FINA Marathon Swimming World Cup, Abu Dhabi. Retired from competitive swimming in April 2021. Performance mindset coach at Brentford FC, working with first-team players on sustaining performance in the Premier League. Biography The Rio 2016 men’s 10km marathon swim ended for Jack Burnell with a second yellow card on the finish straight, a disqualification after what briefly looked like a fifth-place finish, and an unsuccessful appeal. He had arrived in Rio a month after winning European silver in the same event, as the first British swimmer named to Team GB for the open-water Olympic programme. What organisations rarely hear is what happens in the months afterwards. Burnell has spoken publicly about the nightmares and depression that followed, and about the specific, unpredictable triggers that brought the memory back. He did not stop. He returned to the World Championships the following year, won a FINA World Cup gold in Abu Dhabi in 2017, and continued in elite competition until retiring in 2021 after the Doha World Cup. That arc, the public failure, the private struggle, the continued competing, is the substance of what he now takes into rooms. Since retiring he has worked as a performance mindset coach at Brentford FC, introduced to the club by performance psychologist Tom Bates. He is careful about the label. He is not a clinical psychologist. He is a coach whose job is to help players perform in the Premier League, a sustained-pressure environment with few parallels outside elite sport. That live practice is what keeps his speaking content grounded in current work rather than past results. For senior teams the value is specific. Burnell gives organisations a close-range account of how high performers actually cope with repeated high-stakes pressure, how failure lands when it happens in front of the world, and what recovery looks like when the next event is already on the calendar. Key speaking topics Performance under sustained pressure Resilience and recovery after public setback Mental health in high-performance environments Decision-making in high-stakes moments Lessons from elite sport applied to leadership teams The role of performance mindset coaching in professional sport Ideal for CHROs and wellbeing leads building resilience and mental-health programmes for high-pressure functions Senior leadership teams operating under acute, sustained scrutiny Founders and executive teams at inflection points who need honest language for failure and recovery Sales, trading, and client-facing leaders whose teams work in repeated high-stakes decision cycles Audience outcomes A sharper read on how elite performers actually hold up and where they come apart Honest language for failure and recovery that people can use inside their own teams A working distinction between performance mindset coaching and clinical support, and where each belongs Practical reference points from Premier League football and Olympic open-water swimming that translate into everyday leadership pressure

Meet Pavel Verbnyak Pavel Verbnyak is a certified professional speaker (GSF) on personal development, goal-setting, the law of attraction and leadership. He is a success expert, life coach, Vice President of JCI Russia, Brian Tracy Academy’s expert and partner, the founder of “Successful Thinking”, the author of several books, seminars on unlocking human potential and personal efficiency. Pavel specializes in training and development of individuals and organizations, helping to set and achieve personal and professional goals faster and easier, to eliminate limiting beliefs and fears, increase sales etc. Pavel Verbnyak is an award-winning speaker and an internationally recognized leader in personal development and peak performance strategies. For over 15 years, he has been teaching entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders, and people from all walks of life how to create the life they desire. He speaks also to corporate and public audiences on the subjects of Personal and Professional Development, including the executives and staff of many of World’s largest corporations. His exciting talks and seminars on Leadership, Selling, Self-Esteem, Goals, Strategy, Creativity and Success Psychology bring about immediate changes and long-term results. Since 2005 Pavel has been studying the lives of successful people and applied the knowledge and ideas he’s learned into his own life. He is the graduate of Jack Canfield’s 2014 Train the Trainer live program (USA). Pavel will teach you how to get complete control of your time and your life, increase your income, simplify your work, maximize your special talents and abilities, and achieve financial independence. The maximum amount of audience for Pavel’s speech is more than 1000 people. He worked with top Russian & international brands: Sberbank, MTS, Russian Railways, Lukoil, Rostelekom, Renault, Volkswagen etc. Consulted famous Russian and CIS top managers. Most of Pavel’s core strategies for creating breakthroughs have come from modeling and distilling the strategies of leaders in some of the fastest growing companies in the world. He has used these distinctions to help optimize and grow enterprises to new and more profitable levels. Pavel lives in Moscow, Russia, where he continually raises the bar on his own potential by increasing and expanding his comfort zone with continued personal and professional development. Pavel Verbnyak is happily married and has son and daughter. He is active in community and national affairs. He wants to empower you to have a larger vision for your life by connecting to and unleashing the greatness within you. Pavel’s goal is to help people all over the world achieve their personal, professional, and financial goals faster and easier than ever imagined.

Why organisations work with Jason Redman A named decision framework, Get Off the X, that translates combat crisis response into language a commercial team can use when a project, customer or market situation collapses. A New York Times bestselling author of The Trident and Overcome, the second built on interviews with Admiral William McRaven, General Stanley McChrystal and Jocko Willink. Combat credibility that is specific and documented: wounded by machine gun fire outside Fallujah in 2007, awarded the Bronze Star with Valor and the Purple Heart, returned to active duty and commanded again. Works with Fortune 500 audiences including NASCAR, NFL and MLB organisations, Dell and McDonald’s, which gives him a tested range across corporate, sports and operational cultures. Founded Wounded Wear and the Combat Wounded Coalition, so the resilience content is not theoretical. He has built and run an organisation whose entire purpose was helping people rebuild after catastrophic loss. Biography highlights Retired US Navy SEAL Lieutenant, 21 years of service, 11 enlisted and roughly 10 as an officer. Awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Valor, the Purple Heart and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal; holder of the US Army Ranger Tab. New York Times bestselling author of The Trident: The Forging and Reforging of a Navy SEAL Leader (William Morrow). Author of Overcome: Crush Adversity with the Leadership Techniques of America’s Toughest Warriors (Center Street, 2019). Founder of Wounded Wear, which evolved into the Combat Wounded Coalition, a non-profit supporting combat-wounded warriors and families of the fallen. Keynote speaker for Fortune 500 companies, professional sports organisations including NASCAR, the NFL and MLB, and global employers such as Dell and McDonald’s. Biography Outside Fallujah in September 2007, a SEAL assault team walked into heavy machine gun fire. Their commander was hit multiple times, including a round to the face. He kept directing the fight. That commander was Jason Redman, and the next several years of surgeries, rehabilitation and return to duty became the foundation of the leadership method he now teaches to corporate and sporting organisations. Redman spent 21 years in the US Navy, 11 as an enlisted SEAL and nearly a decade as a SEAL officer. His decorations include the Bronze Star Medal with Valor and the Purple Heart. His first book, The Trident, is a New York Times bestseller and is unusual among military memoirs for the candour with which he documents early leadership failure. The book works because he describes being broken as a leader before he describes being rebuilt as one. His second book, Overcome, moves the argument out of his own story and into a wider frame. He interviews Admiral William McRaven, General Stanley McChrystal, Jocko Willink and others to draw out the specific mental and behavioural patterns that let people function in catastrophic conditions. The result is a usable framework rather than a war story. That framework, anchored by Get Off the X and the REACT model, is what he teaches when organisations bring him in to work on crisis response, decision quality and team accountability. The programmes sit on top of operating experience. He founded Wounded Wear, which became the Combat Wounded Coalition, to help combat-wounded service members and Gold Star families rebuild. He also runs Pointman for Life and Get Off the X coaching work. Fortune 500 organisations, including Dell and McDonald’s, and major sporting bodies across the NFL, MLB and NASCAR, have used him to put a language around leadership under pressure that their own teams can carry into the next difficult quarter. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure Crisis response and decision-making Team accountability and ownership Resilience after setback High-performance team culture Mission planning and execution Personal and organisational recovery Ideal for CEO, COO and senior operating leaders facing a live crisis, restructure or turnaround. Executive teams rebuilding after a failed strategy, product or market entry. Sales, trading and high-pressure commercial functions where decision quality under stress is the core job. Professional sports and performance organisations where team culture and recovery from loss shape the season. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for crisis response, anchored by Get Off the X and the REACT model, that leaders can use in live situations. A sharper view of what personal accountability looks like when the plan has failed and blame is the easier option. A usable model for rebuilding a team after a public setback, drawn from Redman’s own command experience and recovery. A clearer understanding of how elite operators think about preparation so that the first decision in a crisis is not the worst one.

Why organisations work with Jack Becker He converts a specific carrier-deck method, Crew Resource Management, into an operating routine that safety, sales, and operations teams can run every week. His Brief-Execute-Debrief-Perfect process gives leaders a common language for accountability that does not rely on personality or tenure. He has run this playbook across all seven regions of GE Power and Water, with a reported 60 percent drop in OSHA recordable mishaps inside that footprint. As a former Landing Signals Officer, he brings a rare fluency in how to give and receive hard feedback in the moment without breaking trust. He speaks credibly to both the boardroom and the line: the same framework has been used with Truist Bank, American Heart Association, Allied Transportation, and BP. Biography highlights Former U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet fighter pilot with over 2,000 supersonic flight hours Combat veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and former Landing Signals Officer aboard nuclear-powered aircraft carriers Graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, BS in Political Science with emphasis on organisational leadership Founder and CEO of Flight Level Solutions, Inc., a human performance and execution consultancy Keynote client roster includes GE, Truist Bank, American Heart Association, Allied Transportation, and BP Signature keynote franchise “Supersonic Success,” with adaptations for sales, safety, patient safety, and athletic performance Biography On a carrier deck, a small mistake becomes a fatal one in seconds. That environment produced the discipline at the centre of Jack Becker’s work: the Crew Resource Management routine that navy aviators use to brief every mission, execute it, then debrief it line by line before the next flight. Becker flew the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet in the U.S. Navy, including strike missions in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and served as a Landing Signals Officer responsible for waving fighter jets onto the deck of nuclear-powered carriers. He came out of that career with more than 2,000 supersonic flight hours and a conviction that what made his squadrons reliable was not talent but a repeatable operating rhythm. Flight Level Solutions, the consultancy he founded and now runs as CEO, translates that rhythm into a corporate routine: Brief, Execute, Debrief, Perfect. Safety, sales, and operations leaders use it to tighten pre-work, force honest after-action conversations, and reduce the compounding cost of small errors. Named engagements include GE Power and Water, where the firm reports a 60 percent drop in OSHA recordable mishaps across its seven regions, as well as Truist Bank, American Heart Association, Allied Transportation, and BP. The argument he brings to a stage is a practical one. High-consequence performance does not come from heroics; it comes from a team that briefs the same way every time, holds each other to the plan, and tells the truth in the debrief. That is the routine he trains leaders to install. Key speaking topics Crew Resource Management for corporate teams Leadership and decision-making under pressure Briefing, execution, and debrief discipline Human error reduction and operational reliability Team communication and psychological safety Safety culture in high-consequence environments Sales execution and performance cadence Ideal for Safety and operations leaders in industrial, energy, transport, and healthcare settings Sales leadership and revenue teams that need a shared execution cadence Executive development programmes focused on decision-making under pressure Patient safety, clinical operations, and quality leadership in healthcare systems Audience outcomes A concrete four-part operating routine, Brief-Execute-Debrief-Perfect, that teams can run the week after the keynote A practical vocabulary for giving and receiving hard feedback in the moment, drawn from LSO practice Specific tactics used by fighter squadrons to cut avoidable error and tighten handoffs A clearer view of how psychological safety and accountability coexist inside high-performing crews Worked examples from carrier aviation mapped onto corporate settings in safety, sales, and operations

Why organisations work with Nick Fry He ran the management buyout of Honda’s F1 team for a nominal sum in 2009, then won both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships that same season. There are very few executives anywhere who can speak from inside a turnaround that extreme. He has led at two distinct scales of performance organisation: a 700-person independent team operating on survival economics, and Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 as a global OEM works operation. Most senior teams need both lenses. His career predates F1 by 24 years at Ford Motor Company, including running Aston Martin Lagonda through the DB7 launch. He speaks credibly to industrial leaders, not only to motorsport audiences. He served roughly five years as a UK Business Ambassador under Prime Ministers Brown and Cameron, giving him a working view of how British engineering competes globally. His book “Survive. Drive. Win.” (Atlantic Books, 2019), with a foreword by Bernie Ecclestone, sets out the Brawn GP year in operational detail rather than as motorsport nostalgia. Biography highlights CEO of Brawn GP, the team that won the 2009 Formula One Drivers’ and Constructors’ World Championships in its only season. CEO of Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 from 2010 to 2013, following Mercedes’ acquisition of Brawn GP. Co-author of “Survive. Drive. Win.” (Atlantic Books, 2019), foreword by Bernie Ecclestone. UK Business Ambassador appointed by Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Non-Executive Chairman of McLaren Applied, appointed October 2021. 24 years at Ford Motor Company, including Managing Director of Aston Martin Lagonda during the DB7 programme. Biography In late 2008, Honda withdrew from Formula One with almost no notice. The team based in Brackley had weeks to find a buyer or close. The CEO, with technical director Ross Brawn, negotiated a management buyout for a nominal sum, secured an interim engine supply from Mercedes, and ran the operation through the winter on a fraction of its previous budget. The team won both World Championships the following season, with Jenson Button taking the Drivers’ title. Brawn GP existed for one year, and won everything available to it. That season is the central case Nick Fry now teaches. He set it out in “Survive. Drive. Win.” (Atlantic Books, 2019), co-written with Ed Gorman and with a foreword by Bernie Ecclestone. The book is a working account of how leadership decisions are made when the organisation has no margin, not a victory memoir. Mercedes acquired the team in 2010 and Fry stayed on as CEO of Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 until 2013, taking a 700-person independent operation into integration with a global OEM works programme. Before Formula One, he spent 24 years at Ford Motor Company. Roles included product planning on the Ford Escort RS Cosworth and the RS200, and Managing Director of Aston Martin Lagonda during the DB7 launch and the move from handbuilt-only production at Newport Pagnell to higher-volume manufacturing at Bloxham. He then ran Prodrive as Managing Director from 2001, before joining BAR and Honda in Formula One. He served roughly five years as a UK Business Ambassador, appointed by Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and David Cameron. He is currently Non-Executive Chairman of McLaren Applied, the company awarded the FIA contract for the 2026 Formula One engine control system, and Chairman of the esports organisation Fnatic. Key speaking topics Leadership under existential pressure Turnaround and restructure in high-performance organisations Decision-making with incomplete information Integration of a small operation into a global parent British engineering and high-performance manufacturing Formula One as an operating model Ideal for CEOs and senior executives facing a forced restructure, funding shock, or major integration Boards weighing the leadership profile required for a turnaround Industrial, engineering, and manufacturing leadership teams Operating committees in performance-driven cultures, including motorsport, aerospace, and elite engineering Audience outcomes A working account of how a senior team made decisions during a survival period in which conventional planning was not possible. A clear view of how leadership behaviours need to change between a small independent organisation and an integrated works operation inside a global OEM. Specific examples of which Brawn GP decisions worked, which did not, and what the CEO would do differently with hindsight. A more honest reading of what Formula One actually demonstrates about high-performance management, separated from the marketing version.

Why organisations work with Kimberley Wilson She is dual-trained as a Chartered Psychologist and a nutritionist, which lets her connect food, sleep and stress to measurable cognitive and behavioural outcomes that HR and clinical leads both recognise. Her Whole Body Mental Health approach gives leaders a workable thesis: brain health is built, not gifted, and the inputs sit inside the working day. Her clinical track record is unusually serious for the corporate stage. She led the therapy service at HMP and YOI Holloway and served as a Governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Mental Health Trust. She has translated the science into two trade books, How to Build a Healthy Brain and Unprocessed, and a regular media platform that includes BBC Radio 4 and BBC Science Focus. She turns research into practice. Audiences leave with specific behaviours to adopt, not a general call to look after themselves. Biography highlights Chartered Psychologist with a Master’s degree in Nutrition, running a private practice in central London. Former Governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Mental Health Trust. Former Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Training Committee in Counselling Psychology. Led the therapy service at HMP and YOI Holloway, then Europe’s largest women’s prison. Author of How to Build a Healthy Brain (Yellow Kite, 2020) and Unprocessed (Penguin, 2023). Host of BBC Radio 4 podcast Made of Stronger Stuff; contributor to BBC Science Focus and Psychologies Magazine. Biography Mental health programmes inside organisations have stalled at the level of awareness. Awareness has not lowered burnout rates or improved cognitive performance, and senior leaders know it. The next conversation is about what physically builds and protects the brain at work. That is the territory Kimberley Wilson has spent her career in. She is a Chartered Psychologist with a Master’s degree in Nutrition, and she works at the point where psychology, food and physiology meet. Her clinical credentials sit in serious places. She was a Governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Mental Health Trust, chaired the British Psychological Society’s Training Committee in Counselling Psychology, and led the therapy service at HMP and YOI Holloway. Her published work makes the argument explicit. How to Build a Healthy Brain set out the lifestyle inputs, sleep, nutrition, movement, recovery, that protect cognitive function across a lifetime. Unprocessed pushed further, showing how modern diets are shaping mood, behaviour and decision quality at population scale. Both books are written for general readers, which is why they translate well to a corporate audience. On stage she is plain spoken, evidence led and useful. She gives leaders a framework for thinking about brain health as infrastructure, and gives employees specific things to change on Monday morning. For organisations spending real money on wellbeing without seeing the return, that combination is the point. Key speaking topics Whole Body Mental Health Brain health and cognitive performance at work Nutrition, mood and behaviour Stress, recovery and burnout prevention Sleep and high-performance teams Workplace mental health strategy Ideal for CHROs and Heads of People rebuilding wellbeing strategies that need to show measurable impact. Boards and executive teams concerned with cognitive performance, decision quality and senior leader burnout. Health, safety and wellbeing leads in high-pressure sectors such as financial services, professional services, healthcare and defence. Audience outcomes A clear thesis on how brain health is built, and where it can be protected or eroded inside the working day. Specific behaviours linked to sleep, nutrition, movement and recovery that audiences can apply immediately. A more accurate reading of the link between food, mood and decision-making at work. A sharper view of where wellbeing investment actually shifts performance, and where it does not.

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 Peter Crolla He has helped build two Formula 1 teams from scratch. He joined Haas in 2015 as the team’s 14th employee and joined Cadillac in 2025 to prepare its 2026 debut. Few F1 practitioners have stood up a competitive operation from zero more than once. His content is grounded in operational mechanics. Audiences leave with how the pit wall actually works, how a 1.8-second pit stop with 22 staff and 36 tasks is choreographed, and how compliance with FIA scrutineering is built into every weekend. Formula 1 sits where exacting regulation meets competitive margins of milliseconds. Leaders in pharmaceuticals, financial services, aviation, and energy find the comparison directly applicable to their own environments. He can explain how F1 reduced driver fatalities from over 40 between 1950 and 1994 to one in the three decades since. The shift came from a system in which safety stopped being a source of competitive advantage and was shared across rival teams. Two decades across British Touring Cars, F3, McLaren, Haas, and Cadillac give him grounded comparative views on which high-performance practices transfer between organisations and which collapse outside their original context. Biography highlights Race Team Manager at the Cadillac F1 Team, preparing the operation for its 2026 Formula 1 debut. Team Manager at Haas F1 Team for eight seasons, joining as the 14th employee in 2015 ahead of the team’s 2016 debut. Previously Team Leader at McLaren Racing, working alongside World Champions Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso. Oversaw Haas’s maiden Formula 1 pole position at the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix. Helped Haas secure FIA Three-Star Environmental Accreditation ahead of the 2023 season. Awarded the Teamwork Award at the 2013 MIA Business Excellence Awards during his time at Team Dynamics in the British Touring Car Championship. Biography In Formula 1, a pit stop now takes 1.8 seconds. Twenty-two people complete thirty-six tasks while the car is stationary. One missed cue and a podium becomes a points-paying afternoon. That kind of choreography is what Peter Crolla has spent his career producing. He joined the Haas F1 Team in 2015 as its fourteenth employee, before the team had been on a grid, and stayed for eight seasons as Team Manager. In 2025 he left to take the same role at the Cadillac F1 Team, where he is preparing the operation for its 2026 debut. Doing this work twice in a decade puts him in a small group of practitioners who have stood up a competitive Formula 1 team from a standing start. F1 teams of 1800 staff coordinate around twenty-four non-negotiable race weekend deadlines a year, under one of the most exacting regulatory regimes in commercial sport. Crolla speaks about how that machine actually runs. He explains the daily tension between psychological safety and personal accountability, and how F1 turned over forty driver fatalities between 1950 and 1994 into one in the three decades since. The change came from stopping competitive teams from hoarding what they learned about safety. Key speaking topics High-performance team operations Leadership in regulated, high-pressure environments Operational excellence under non-negotiable deadlines Safety culture and risk transformation Building organisations from a standing start Continuous improvement and marginal gains Sustainability in elite motorsport Ideal for COOs and operations directors in regulated sectors such as financial services, pharmaceuticals, aviation, and energy, where compliance and competitive performance have to be solved together. Founders, transformation leads, and executive teams building or rebuilding an organisation from a standing start. Senior risk and safety leaders looking at how F1’s cultural transformation was actually achieved over three decades. HR and people leaders focused on psychological safety and accountability in technical or engineering-led organisations. Audience outcomes The choreography of a 1.8-second pit stop across 22 staff, including where it most often breaks down. The specific practices that keep psychological safety and personal accountability in balance inside an F1 operation. How F1’s safety record went from over forty driver fatalities in its first four decades to one in its last three, including the specific decision to stop competing on safety. A clear separation between high-performance practices that transfer between industries and those that depend on the specifics of F1.