Purpose-Driven Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with Simon Alexander Ong A serious, published thesis on energy management as a leadership and workforce capability, anchored in Energize (Penguin, 2022) and recognised as Business Book of the Year for Wellness and Wellbeing in 2023. Direct credibility with global employers on people and culture briefs, with named keynote work for Microsoft, Salesforce, Unilever, EY, Adobe and Barclays. A coaching practice behind the content, with qualifications from The Coaching Academy and NLP training, so the material survives contact with senior audiences, not just town-hall settings. Endorsements from Simon Sinek, Marie Forleo and Marshall Goldsmith, giving HR and communications leads confident reference points when pitching internally. Biography highlights Bestselling author of Energize: Make the Most of Every Moment (Penguin Life, 2022). Winner, Business Book of the Year, Wellness and Wellbeing, Business Book Awards 2023. Endorsed by Simon Sinek, Marie Forleo and Marshall Goldsmith. Keynote engagements with Microsoft, Salesforce, Unilever, EY, Adobe, Barclays and DocuSign. Featured on Sky News, BBC Radio London and LBC, with written contributions in Forbes, HuffPost, Virgin and The Guardian. BSc Economics, London School of Economics; coaching qualifications from The Coaching Academy. Biography Most organisations now accept that burnout, disengagement and quiet exit are not edge cases. They are showing up across leadership teams, middle management and frontline staff at the same time. The argument in Energize, published by Penguin in 2022 and named Business Book of the Year for Wellness and Wellbeing in 2023, is that this is an energy problem before it is a wellbeing problem. Simon Alexander Ong treats energy as a managed resource. His work asks leaders to look at how attention, recovery, relationships and purpose are organised across a working week, then to redesign the parts that drain people without producing anything. The same lens is then turned on teams and on the wider employee experience. The practitioner side keeps the material grounded. Ong is a qualified coach through The Coaching Academy, trained in NLP, and works one-to-one with senior leaders alongside the speaking work. That is why a keynote at Microsoft, Salesforce, Unilever or EY tends to land as a conversation with the room rather than a motivational set piece. Endorsements from Simon Sinek, Marie Forleo and Marshall Goldsmith have helped place him on the same shelf as the leadership and performance authors that senior HR and culture functions already trust. For boards thinking about engagement, retention and the human cost of permanent change, his content gives a language and a set of moves that staff and leaders can actually use. Key speaking topics Energy management for leaders and teams Sustainable high performance Employee engagement and wellbeing Purposeful leadership Focus and attention in a noisy work environment Mindset and personal growth Coaching cultures inside organisations Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and heads of employee experience designing wellbeing and engagement strategy Leadership development and learning teams running senior offsites and high-potential programmes Internal communications and culture leads planning all-hands and kick-off events Sales and commercial leadership audiences working under sustained pressure and target intensity Audience outcomes A clear language for energy as a managed resource at individual, team and organisational level Specific practices for protecting focus and recovery inside an existing diary, not in addition to it A more honest view of where current wellbeing efforts are working and where they are decorative Renewed sense of purpose and ownership for senior leaders carrying long change agendas Practical prompts a manager can use with a team the following Monday

Why organisations work with Simon Sinek The Golden Circle gives leadership teams a named, diagrammatic model for examining whether their communication and strategy starts from purpose or defaults to product; concrete enough to run a board session around, not just a concept to absorb from a stage. The Infinite Game framework reframes how organisations think about competition: the argument that most organisations are playing a finite game in an inherently infinite one gives senior leaders a precise diagnostic for why short-termism is corroding their culture and decision-making. His work on the Circle of Safety – drawn from military and organisational research – gives leaders a specific language and accountability structure for psychological safety, distinguishing it from vague “culture” conversations. Three consecutive Thinkers50 appearances (2017, 2019, 2021), including the Future Thinker award, position him inside the recognised canon of serious management thinking – relevant where senior buyers are evaluating credibility, not just popularity. His reach into the US Armed Forces, the United Nations, and the US Congress alongside global corporate work gives his frameworks a cross-sector validation that most leadership speakers cannot match. Biography highlights Author of five books on leadership and purpose, including Start with Why (global bestseller, over one million copies sold in the US alone), Leaders Eat Last (New York Times bestseller), and The Infinite Game (New York Times bestseller); published by Portfolio/Penguin and Penguin Random House Creator of the Golden Circle framework, one of the most widely adopted models in leadership communication and organisational purpose TED Talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” (2009) is the third most-watched talk on TED.com, with over 60 million views Named to the Thinkers50 ranking three consecutive times (2017, 2019, 2021); recipient of the Thinkers50 Future Thinker Award Adjunct staff member, RAND Corporation (since 2010); former instructor in Strategic Communications, Columbia University Founder of The Optimism Company, a leadership learning and development platform, and Optimism Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House; has spoken at the United Nations, US Congress, and across senior US military leadership Biography Most leadership conversations begin in the wrong place. They start with what an organisation does or how it does it – and never reach the question that actually determines whether people are engaged, aligned, and willing to give discretionary effort: why. The inability to answer that question convincingly is not a branding gap; it is a leadership gap, and Simon Sinek has built one of the most recognised frameworks in contemporary management thinking to address it. His Golden Circle model – introduced in Start with Why (2009) and subsequently the subject of the third most-watched TED Talk in history – provides organisations with a structured means of diagnosing whether their leadership, communication, and strategy is purpose-led or merely product-led. The argument is grounded in the biology of decision-making: people do not respond primarily to logic and features, but to belief and identity. The practical implication for leadership is significant, and it is why the framework has moved from conference rooms into board strategy sessions, culture programmes, and military leadership curricula. His later work extends the argument. The Infinite Game (2019, New York Times bestseller) identifies a structural problem in how most organisations compete: treating an inherently infinite game – business, leadership, institutional relevance – as if it has a finish line. Leaders operating with a finite mindset optimise for short-term metrics and burn through the trust, culture, and purpose that actually determine longevity. This is not motivational language; it is a specific claim about strategic error, and it gives senior leaders a framework for examining decisions that are degrading their organisations from the inside. Sinek’s affiliations reflect the range at which his work operates. As an adjunct staff member at the RAND Corporation since 2010, advising on military innovation, and having spoken at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit and directly to senior leadership across every branch of the US Armed Forces, he brings institutional credibility that extends well beyond the corporate speaker circuit. Three consecutive Thinkers50 appearances, including the Future Thinker Award, confirm his standing within the serious canon of management thinking. Key speaking topics Purpose-driven leadership and the Golden Circle Organisational trust and psychological safety Finite vs. infinite mindset in strategy and leadership Leadership culture and the conditions for engagement Long-term organisational performance and decision-making Inspiring communication for leaders and teams Values, identity, and organisational alignment Ideal for C-suite and board-level leadership development programmes where the strategic case for culture and purpose needs to be made at an executive level CHROs and People directors working on engagement, trust, and the conditions under which employees perform at their best Transformation leads and strategy teams examining how short-term competitive pressures are eroding long-term capability Senior leadership conferences requiring a speaker with both mass-market name recognition and a defensible intellectual framework Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary – Golden Circle, Circle of Safety, Infinite Game – that gives leadership teams a common reference point for conversations about purpose, trust, and strategy A framework for diagnosing whether their organisation’s leadership and communication starts from why or defaults to what A reframe of competitive strategy: the finite vs. infinite mindset distinction as a diagnostic tool for identifying decisions that are weakening organisational resilience Greater clarity on the specific leadership behaviours – protection, consistency, accountability – that build psychological safety and sustain discretionary effort A practical case for why culture and purpose are strategic variables, not HR programmes

Why organisations work with Stuart Rose He has run a defensive takeover at the highest level in British retail. M&S beat Sir Philip Green’s bid in 2004 with Rose as chief executive, three weeks into the job. He turned Arcadia around and sold it for over £800m, then took on the M&S turnaround the same decade. Two CEO-led recoveries in adjacent businesses, a year apart. He authored the 2015 Better Leadership for Tomorrow review for the Department of Health, the standing reference document on why NHS hospital leadership underperforms and what to do about it. Plan A at M&S was the first time a FTSE retailer treated sustainability as a board strategy with capital attached, not a CSR report. Rose committed £200m and signed his top suppliers in private before launch. Sits in the House of Lords as Baron Rose of Monewden and chaired Ocado Group from 2013 to 2021. Buyers get a perspective shaped by both governance and operating accountability. Biography highlights Former Chief Executive (2004 to 2008) and Executive Chairman (2008 to 2011) of Marks & Spencer. Former Chairman of Ocado Group (2013 to 2021) and Chairman of Asda (2021 to 2024), with day-to-day executive leadership at Asda from September 2024. Former Chief Executive of Arcadia Group, Argos, Booker plc and Burton Group. Author of the 2015 NHS leadership review commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health, Better Leadership for Tomorrow. Knighted in the 2008 New Year Honours for services to retail and corporate social responsibility. Conservative life peer: Baron Rose of Monewden, created 2014. Biography Marks & Spencer was three weeks into a hostile bid from Sir Philip Green when Stuart Rose was appointed chief executive in May 2004. The defence held. What followed was a six-year programme that restored profit, rebuilt the supply base, and put sustainability at the centre of the operating plan rather than the CSR report. Plan A launched in 2007 with 100 commitments across climate, waste, raw materials, fair partnership and health. The framing was deliberately blunt: there is no Plan B. £200m of capital was committed up front, and the largest M&S suppliers were briefed privately before launch so the public commitment was already operationally backed. The retail track record runs deeper than M&S. As chief executive of Arcadia from 2000, he led the turnaround that culminated in the £800m sale of the group in 2002. Earlier, he ran Argos, Booker plc, where he engineered the merger with Iceland to form the Big Food Group and the Burton Group. The 2015 NHS leadership review for the Department of Health applied the same operating discipline to a non-commercial setting, with 19 recommendations on talent, accountability and visible frontline leadership. He chaired Ocado Group from 2013 to 2021 and took the chair at Asda in November 2021, stepping into executive responsibilities in September 2024 to stabilise the business. He sits in the House of Lords as Baron Rose of Monewden. Key speaking topics Turnaround leadership in large consumer businesses Defended takeover bids and board response Sustainability as an operating strategy Public sector reform and NHS leadership Corporate governance and the chair role UK retail and the future of the high street Ideal for Boards and chairs of large consumer or retail businesses are going through performance recovery Public sector leadership audiences responsible for hospital, trust or system reform CEO and CFO offsites where the agenda is restoring investor and workforce confidence Sustainability and ESG forums where the audience is past narrative and into capital allocation Audience outcomes A working account of how a defended takeover changes board behaviour and the CEO calendar in the first 90 days. The decisions behind Plan A, including how Rose secured supplier alignment before public launch. A clear view of why NHS leadership underperforms and which of the 2015 review recommendations still apply. The chair’s perspective on when to intervene executively and when to hold back, drawn from the Ocado and Asda chairmanships.

Why organisations work with Sue Garrard She has operated inside one of the most scrutinised corporate sustainability programmes in the world – accountable for 72 time-bound targets, managing teams across 180 markets, and delivering the commercial result: Unilever’s sustainable living brands growing 67% faster than the rest of the portfolio. She was part of the four-person leadership team that handled Kraft Heinz’s hostile takeover approach – giving her first-hand experience of the moment ESG strategy is tested by investor pressure in real time. She brings a specific, transferable argument: that sustainability is not a constraint on commercial performance but, if properly embedded, a measurable driver of brand growth. She has the data to demonstrate it. Her advisory work spans financial services (Lloyds Bank, NatWest), consumer goods (Mars, Danone, Heineken), and retail (Primark, O2) – sectors with structurally different ESG pressures – which means she can hold a credible board conversation across industries, not just in one. As Chair of Trustees at Blueprint for Better Business and a Fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, she is positioned at the intersection of corporate practice and governance – not a pure consultant, not a pure academic. Biography highlights Former Executive Vice President, Sustainable Business and Communications, Unilever (2014–2018) – accountable for the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan across 180 markets Founder, Sue Garrard Consulting (2019–present); advisory clients include Mars, ABF/Primark, Lloyds Bank, NatWest Banking Group, Danone, Heineken, Natura, O2, the RHS, and the BBC Chair of Trustees, Blueprint for Better Business (founder trustee) Fellow, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL); tutors on senior executive education programmes Visiting Fellow, Cranfield School of Management; Fellow of the RSA Ranked 13th in Forbes’ Top 100 Women Sustainability Influencers Worldwide (November 2020) Board member, Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit Former Director General, Customer Strategy and Communications, UK Department for Work and Pensions Biography At Unilever, Sue Garrard held responsibility for the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan – 72 quantified, time-bound targets, teams across 180 markets, and a direct mandate to make sustainability a driver of brand performance. By the time she left in 2018, Unilever’s sustainable living brands were growing 67% faster than the rest of the portfolio and representing 70% of company growth. That is not a communications outcome; it is a commercial one, and it was achieved by connecting ESG commitments to operational accountability across the business. She was also part of the four-person team, led by the CEO, that managed the rebuttal of Kraft Heinz’s hostile takeover bid. That experience – sustainability strategy meeting acute investor pressure – gives her a board-level fluency that most advisers in this space do not have. She understands what it looks like when a company’s long-term purpose is tested by short-term market logic. Since founding Sue Garrard Consulting in 2019, she has advised boards and executive teams at Mars, Danone, Lloyds Bank, NatWest, ABF/Primark, Heineken, O2, and others across consumer goods, financial services, and retail. Both Primark and the Royal Horticultural Society launched public sustainability strategies in 2021 built on her work. She tutors on CISL’s senior executive education programmes at Cambridge, and serves as Chair of Trustees at Blueprint for Better Business. Forbes placed her 13th in its global ranking of the top 100 women sustainability influencers in 2020. Her public argument, consistently made across interviews and platforms, is direct: sustainability is not a moral addition to business strategy – it is business strategy, and the organisations that treat it otherwise are building structural risk into their commercial model. Key speaking topics Corporate sustainability strategy and commercial integration ESG governance and board accountability Sustainable brand growth and marketing Stakeholder and investor scrutiny Net zero strategy and organisational transition Purpose-led business leadership Public–private sector leadership Ideal for Boards and C-suite executives navigating ESG accountability and investor pressure Chief Sustainability Officers and sustainability leadership teams building or overhauling strategy Brand and marketing leadership teams connecting sustainability to growth Organisations in financial services, consumer goods, or retail at a strategic inflection point on sustainability Audience outcomes A clearer framework for connecting sustainability targets to commercial performance metrics, not just reporting obligations Practical understanding of what large-scale ESG integration looks like operationally – including where it fails and why A more credible way to articulate the business case for sustainability to boards, investors, and senior leadership teams Insight into how to navigate investor and stakeholder scrutiny when sustainability commitments are challenged Perspective on the governance structures that sustain long-term sustainability commitment through leadership and market cycles

Why organisations work with Tania de Jong AM A working body of evidence that creativity is buildable inside an organisation, drawn from six businesses and four charities she has founded, including Creative Universe, Creativity Australia and The Song Room. Co-founder and Executive Director of Mind Medicine Australia, the organisation behind Australia’s 2023 rescheduling of psilocybin and MDMA for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD, the first national framework of its kind in the world. A keynote format that pairs argument with live performance, used at Thinkers50 European Business Forum in Denmark and the International Forum on Consciousness in the United States, and tested across more than 40 countries. Eight editions of the Creative Innovation Asia Pacific Global Forum, awarded Corporate Event of the Year at the global Eventex Awards, giving her direct exposure to how international leaders are framing innovation, AI, wellbeing and the future of work. A position on social inclusion through the With One Voice programme that is grounded in operating practice, not theory, having reached thousands of participants across community choirs in Australia. Biography highlights Co-founder and Executive Director of Mind Medicine Australia, the organisation behind the world-first 2023 rescheduling of psilocybin and MDMA in Australia for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD. Member of the Order of Australia (AM), 2008, for service to the arts and to music and arts enrichment programmes in schools and communities. Founder of Creativity Australia, Creative Universe, Creative Innovation Global, The Song Room, MTA Entertainment & Events, Dimension5 and Pot-Pourri. Keynote speaker at the Thinkers50 European Business Forum, Denmark, 2018, and the International Forum on Consciousness, United States, 2019; TEDxMelbourne speaker, “How singing together changes the brain”. Named in the Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence, Richtopia’s 100 Most Influential Australian Entrepreneurs, and Psychedelic Invest’s 100 Most Influential People in Psychedelics. Ernst and Young Australian Social Entrepreneur of the Year; Churchill Fellow; AGSE Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame, Swinburne University; Bachelor of Law (Honours), University of Melbourne. Special guest performer on Dr Bessel van der Kolk’s 2026 four-city Australian workshop tour for The Body Keeps the Score, presented with Mind Medicine Australia; speaker on psychedelic-assisted therapies at Dave Asprey’s BEYOND Biohacking Conference in Austin, Texas. Biography Australia became the first country in the world to reschedule psilocybin and MDMA for the treatment of depression and PTSD in 2023. Mind Medicine Australia, which de Jong co-founded with Peter Hunt and now runs as Executive Director, did the regulatory and clinical groundwork that made it possible. That outcome is the clearest statement of how de Jong tends to work: a long-running campaign to change a system that most assume cannot be moved. The same pattern runs through the rest of her record. Six businesses and four charities, including Creative Universe, Creativity Australia, The Song Room and Creative Innovation Global, each built around a specific argument about creativity, inclusion or social repair. The Song Room alone has reached over a million Australian students through music programmes in schools that would not otherwise access them. Her speaking work is unusual in form. She is a classically trained soprano who has performed in over 40 countries, and her keynotes weave argument with live singing. Thinkers50 invited her to keynote its European Business Forum in 2018, and in 2026 she performed as special guest on Dr Bessel van der Kolk’s Australian tour for The Body Keeps the Score. Her TEDxMelbourne talk on the neuroscience of group singing is often cited in workplace wellbeing writing. The substantive claim underneath all of it is that creativity and collective purpose are operating disciplines. The Creative Innovation Asia Pacific Global Forum, which she has run eight times and which won Corporate Event of the Year at the Eventex Awards, is the working venue for that argument across AI, leadership, wellbeing and the future of work. Key speaking topics Creativity as a strategic discipline Innovation culture and the future of work Entrepreneurship and social enterprise Mental health, wellbeing and the neuroscience of connection Diversity, inclusion and collective purpose Leadership in disruption and reinvention Storytelling and performance in business communication Ideal for CHROs and culture leads designing engagement, wellbeing and inclusion programmes that need to land beyond the slide deck. Innovation leads, transformation directors and strategy teams looking to move creativity from training programme to operating practice. CEOs and boards in sectors facing structural reinvention, where the soft conditions of change are as material as the hard ones. Conference organisers seeking a keynote that combines argument with live performance and high audience engagement. Audience outcomes A specific case for treating creativity as a leadership capability, not a workshop output. A working view of how social inclusion and collective practice change individual and team performance, drawn from the With One Voice programme and supporting neuroscience. An updated read on the global innovation agenda, informed by eight editions of the Creative Innovation Asia Pacific Forum. Exposure to one of the few global voices arguing for psychedelic-assisted therapy as a serious instrument of mental health policy, with evidence from the Australian rescheduling. A keynote experience that uses live performance to shift the energy of a room, useful for conferences that need a tonal lift alongside content.

Why organisations work with Tanya O’Callaghan She speaks to consumer scepticism from the inside. Fifteen years touring globally in arena rock, paired with lifelong plant-based advocacy, gives her credibility with the audience corporate sustainability teams are trying to reach but rarely understand. Her Highway to Health documentary series with Sepultura’s Derrick Green, distributed through UNCHAINEDTV, has road-tested her arguments with farmers, chefs, scientists and figures including Moby and Kat Von D. The material on stage is sourced, not theoretical. The Leadership Rhapsody keynote, co-built with former Hallmark executive Wayne Strickland, translates band dynamics into a working language for senior teams on cohesion, performance under pressure and creative discipline. As the first woman in Whitesnake, she carries a story senior audiences remember. The hook draws the room; the content keeps them. She is unusual in the speaker market for combining a working stage career with serious advocacy on plant-based business, animal welfare and consumer-led change, which gives her access to audiences and corporate briefs that purely corporate speakers cannot reach. Biography highlights Bassist of Whitesnake, the first woman to hold a permanent member position in the band’s history. Toured and recorded with Bruce Dickinson, Puscifer (Maynard James Keenan), Dee Snider, Steven Adler, Nuno Bettencourt, Orianthi and Sharon Corr. Creator and co-host of Highway to Health, a plant-based travel and sustainability documentary series on UNCHAINEDTV with Sepultura frontman Derrick Green. Co-creator of the Leadership Rhapsody corporate keynote with Wayne Strickland, a 38-year Hallmark executive. Featured on the Rich Roll Podcast and profiled by Bass Magazine, Guitar World, Thrive Global, Sentient Media and Lady Freethinker. Lifelong vegan and public advocate for plant-based living, environmental sustainability and animal welfare. Biography Consumer trust in corporate sustainability claims is thinner than the marketing budget behind them. Brand teams know it, and they know the people they most need to reach are exactly the ones least likely to listen to another ESG report. That gap, between claim and credibility, is where Tanya O’Callaghan’s corporate work lives. She came to it from rock and roll. The first woman to hold a permanent place in Whitesnake, she has toured and recorded with Bruce Dickinson, Puscifer, Dee Snider, Steven Adler, Nuno Bettencourt and Sharon Corr. The stage career is not the message. It is the credibility that lets her tell sustainability stories to audiences who tune out the standard sustainability voice. Highway to Health, the documentary series she created with Sepultura’s Derrick Green and distributes on UNCHAINEDTV, takes that approach further. The show follows the two musicians around the world meeting farmers, chefs, scientists and cultural figures including Moby and Kat Von D, building a working picture of what plant-based living and authentic sustainability look like in practice. The material she brings to corporate stages is field-tested, not theoretical. Her Leadership Rhapsody keynote, co-built with former Hallmark executive Wayne Strickland, takes the same translation approach in the other direction. Forty years of stage discipline, ensemble cohesion and live decision-making become a language senior teams can use to talk about performance, trust and creative work without resorting to the usual corporate vocabulary. It is a rare profile: a working professional musician with a serious second act in business conversation, picked up by sustainability and people teams that want a different kind of voice on greenwashing, consumer power and the social contract between brands and the audiences who buy from them. Key speaking topics Sustainability and authentic ESG communication Consumer power and brand credibility Plant-based business and food systems Corporate social leadership Creative performance and ensemble dynamics Health and wellbeing for travelling and remote workforces Ideal for ESG, sustainability and brand teams briefing for consumer-facing change CHROs and people leaders looking for an outside voice on wellbeing and engagement Senior leadership offsites where a different register is needed to open a difficult conversation Conferences in food, retail, consumer goods and lifestyle sectors Audience outcomes A sharper read on how younger and sustainability-conscious consumers test corporate claims Practical examples of where greenwashing is exposed and where credibility is earned A working framework for translating ensemble performance into corporate team dynamics New language for talking about health and sustainability inside the organisation without the usual jargon A memorable opening that gets a senior room engaged on subjects they would normally resist

Why organisations work with Tara Shine Two decades inside the UN climate negotiation system, including EU negotiating roles within the UNFCCC, give her direct authority on the policy environment shaping corporate net zero obligations. Reviewed the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C, the scientific reference point most net zero strategies are still benchmarked against. Runs Change by Degrees, a B Corp certified Irish social enterprise, so her advice is grounded in the operating reality of building a sustainable business, not only in policy theory. Communicates climate substance to non-specialist audiences without softening it. The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures and BBC One presenter work demonstrate the rare ability to hold scientific authority and audience accessibility in the same conversation. Adviser to the Mary Robinson Foundation and The Elders, giving her a track record at the level where climate strategy meets serious geopolitical and ethical scrutiny. Biography highlights Co-founder and Director, Change by Degrees (B Corp certified social enterprise) Chair of Trustees, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), 2014 to 2025 Former Special Advisor, Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice; adviser to The Elders UN climate change negotiator for over a decade, including for the EU under the UNFCCC Co-facilitator, Structured Expert Dialogue of the Second Periodic Review under the UNFCCC Reviewer, IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C Presenter, Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2020 (Lecture Three: Up in the Air); BBC One contributor Author, “How to Save Your Planet One Object at a Time” (Simon and Schuster, 2020) Biography The Paris Agreement was negotiated in rooms most business audiences never see. Tara Shine spent a decade in those rooms, including in EU negotiating positions, and later co-facilitated the Structured Expert Dialogue assessing whether the Agreement’s goals were actually being met. That history matters now, because the policy assumptions corporates built their net zero plans on are being tested in real time. She is co-founder and director of Change by Degrees, a B Corp certified Irish social enterprise that advises organisations on the operating side of sustainability. Her work as a reviewer of the IPCC Special Report on 1.5C gave her standing in the scientific community; her role as Special Advisor to the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice gave her standing in the political one. Few speakers carry both at once. Public audiences know her from the 2020 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, where she delivered Lecture Three on air pollution and climate, and from BBC One presenting work on heat pumps and electric vehicles. Her 2020 book “How to Save Your Planet One Object at a Time” (Simon and Schuster) translated climate science into household decisions, and was reviewed by The Times as “an unpreachy guide free of jargon and full of often surprising information.” She chaired the Board of Trustees of the International Institute for Environment and Development from 2014 to 2025, a tenure that placed her at the intersection of climate, equity, and development finance for over a decade. That vantage point gives her something most sustainability speakers do not have: a direct view of how climate policy is made, contested, and translated into the rules companies have to operate inside. Key speaking topics Climate policy and the UN negotiation system Corporate net zero and the credibility of climate commitments Energy transition and the gap between policy and capital allocation ESG under scrutiny Climate justice and the geopolitics of climate action Sustainability strategy for B Corps and purpose-led businesses Science communication for non-specialist audiences Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting or revising net zero strategy Chief sustainability officers and ESG leads briefing investors and regulators Corporate communications and investor relations teams under scrutiny on climate claims Sustainability and transformation leads inside energy, finance, manufacturing, and consumer sectors Audience outcomes A clearer read on where global climate policy is heading and what it requires of corporates A sharper distinction between climate commitments that will hold up under scrutiny and those that will not Practical reference points from a B Corp operator, not only a policy adviser A scientific grounding for boardroom climate conversations, free of jargon Confidence to engage seriously with stakeholders on climate without retreating into PR language

Why organisations work with Tim Munden His “inner and outer game” framework gives leadership teams a practical diagnostic for the gap between leadership intent and leadership behaviour, and a structured path to close it He built and ran global leadership development for Unilever’s 135,000-person workforce, including pipeline programmes for the most senior roles in the organisation; he knows what works at enterprise scale, not just in the classroom Unilever’s “Discover Your Purpose” programme, which he designed and led, reached 56,000 employees and was validated through randomised controlled trials, a level of rigour that most leadership interventions never reach He co-founded the Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health, giving him a credible and practical perspective on the link between psychological safety, energy, and sustained organisational performance His Senior Associate role at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership connects his leadership frameworks to the strategic context that boards increasingly expect their senior teams to navigate: purpose, resilience, and transformation for the longer term Biography highlights Former Chief Learning Officer and Head of Wellbeing at Unilever, responsible for leadership development and learning across a 135,000-person global workforce Former HR Vice President for Unilever UK & Ireland, a €2.5bn business unit Senior Associate, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), University of Cambridge Partner at inchigo, a leadership and culture consultancy Co-founded the Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health; represented Unilever on the UK Thriving at Work Leadership Council Developed Unilever’s “Discover Your Purpose” programme, reaching 56,000 employees with outcomes validated through randomised controlled trials Joined Unilever as a graduate trainee in 1993; career spans roles across the Netherlands, Belgium, the US, and the UK Holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the University of Manchester and Manchester School of Management Biography Leadership development in large organisations has a persistent failure mode: it develops individuals in isolation from the organisational culture that will either enable or undermine everything they have learned. Tim Munden spent the better part of three decades inside one of the world’s most complex multinationals working on both sides of that problem simultaneously. As Chief Learning Officer and Head of Wellbeing at Unilever, Munden was accountable for leadership capability across a 135,000-person workforce. His approach centred on what he describes as the “inner and outer game” of leadership. The inner game is the psychological clarity, purpose, and resilience that allows a leader to act under pressure; the outer game is the cultural architecture and organisational design that gives people the conditions to perform. Neither works without the other. That dual framework now shapes how he advises executive teams and consults with organisations across financial services, technology, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods. The practical rigour behind his work is verifiable. The “Discover Your Purpose” programme Munden designed at Unilever was completed by 56,000 employees, with outcomes tested through randomised controlled trials. Those outcomes included improved psychological safety, work fulfilment, and discretionary effort. He also co-founded the Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health and represented Unilever on the UK Thriving at Work Leadership Council, establishing workplace wellbeing not as a wellbeing initiative but as a leadership strategy with measurable business consequences. Since leaving Unilever, Munden has continued this work as a Partner at inchigo, a leadership and culture consultancy, and as a Senior Associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, where the link between leadership capability and long-term organisational resilience is a central research concern. He brings to boards and senior leadership teams a rare combination: he has operated at CLO level inside a global organisation and has built the frameworks to explain and replicate what makes leadership development work in practice. Key speaking topics Leadership capability for disruption and transformation Leadership agility, resilience and adaptability through change The inner and outer game of leadership Human skills for leadership in the age of AI Purpose-driven culture and organisations Workplace wellbeing as a performance strategy Leadership development at enterprise scale Psychological safety and organisational agility Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and senior HR leadership teams designing enterprise leadership strategy CEOs and executive committees navigating significant transformation or cultural change Learning and development leaders building or evaluating large-scale leadership programmes Boards and remuneration committees examining the link between leadership culture and long-term organisational resilience Audience outcomes A clear model, the inner and outer game, for diagnosing where leadership capability is breaking down and what to do about it Practical understanding of how purpose can be embedded in organisational culture at scale, with evidence from a large, tested programme A more precise vocabulary for the link between psychological safety, wellbeing, and sustained performance, moving the conversation beyond wellbeing as an HR initiative Insight into what enterprise-scale leadership development actually requires, drawn from direct experience at one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies Clearer thinking on the leadership capabilities most needed to maintain performance in periods of sustained uncertainty

Why organisations work with Tom Barton He has the rare combination of operator and supply chain reformer. Honest Burgers is a 39-site casual dining brand that buys whole carcasses directly from regenerative farms, a structural decision most restaurant groups have not been willing to make. His sustainability content carries weight because it is paid for. Honest absorbed the cost of switching to regenerative British beef rather than passing it to customers, a commercial decision a buyer can interrogate, not a marketing claim. He speaks credibly on building a brand from a market stall to a national footprint, with named milestones: the Brixton opening, the Cateys 2021 Restaurateur of the Year (Group) award, and the 2026 National Burger Awards win for “The Honest”. He is a useful voice for boards weighing ESG commitments against margin: the Honest Farming programme is a working example of procurement volume being directed at climate-smart agriculture, not a pledge. Biography highlights Co-founder, Honest Burgers, opened first site in Brixton Market in 2011 Honest Burgers now operates 39+ UK restaurants across London, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Brighton, Manchester, Liverpool and Reading Cateys 2021 Restaurateur of the Year (Group), with Phillip Eeles and Dorian Waite Created “The Honest”, named UK’s Best Burger at the National Burger Awards 2026 Built the first regeneratively farmed British beef supply chain in UK restaurants, in partnership with the Grass Roots Farming Cooperative Founder of the Honest Farming programme, supporting six regenerative farming families through premium pricing and whole-carcass procurement Biography A small marquee with a griddle and fryer at festivals in 2010 became one of the UK’s most respected casual dining brands. Tom Barton and Phillip Eeles ran outdoor catering for a year before raising investment with restaurant operator Dorian Waite and opening a first site in Brixton Market in 2011. The interesting story is what happened after the brand worked. Honest Burgers grew to 39 sites without selling to a private equity roll-up and without losing its product position. The Cateys 2021 award for Restaurateur of the Year (Group) recognised that scale, particularly through the pandemic. In 2026, “The Honest”, a recipe Barton created, was named UK’s Best Burger at the National Burger Awards. The more substantive contribution is a supply-chain one. Honest Burgers became the first UK restaurant group to build a regeneratively farmed British beef supply chain, buying whole carcasses directly from a small group of farming families through the Grass Roots Farming Cooperative. The company absorbed the cost rather than passing it to customers, on the argument that volume procurement is the lever climate-smart agriculture actually responds to. That is the practical content of what Barton brings to a senior audience. Casual dining is a low-margin, high-velocity category. Doing the harder thing on sourcing inside it, at scale, and paying for it out of margin, is a credible operating example for any board that has signed an ESG commitment and is now looking at the bill. Key speaking topics Brand building from start-up to national scale Regenerative agriculture in commercial supply chains Sustainability as an operating decision, not a marketing position Founder leadership through rapid growth Hospitality, food culture and consumer brand Procurement and whole-carcass sourcing Company culture under expansion Ideal for Founders and operating teams scaling consumer brands beyond their first ten sites or stores Boards and CEOs reviewing ESG commitments where supply chain is the largest source of emissions Procurement, sourcing and category leaders in food, retail and hospitality Investor and accelerator audiences interested in entrepreneurship in regulated, low-margin categories Audience outcomes A working example of a regenerative supply chain inside a competitive high-street category, with the commercial trade-offs named A first-hand account of how brand discipline is maintained as a hospitality business moves from one site to forty A clearer sense of where sustainability claims become operating substance, and where they remain marketing Specific decisions about pricing, procurement and farm partnerships that other operators can pressure-test against their own model

Why organisations work with Wayne Hemingway MBE Built one of Britain’s best-known fashion labels from a Camden Market stall and sold it to Pentland in 1999, then converted that experience into a 25-year design consultancy advising developers, local authorities, retailers, and cultural institutions. Operates across categories most speakers do not: fashion, mass-market housing, public-realm regeneration, festival creation, and second-hand retail, all anchored in delivered projects rather than commentary. Founded Festival of Thrift and Charity Super.Mkt, turning sustainability and circular consumption into commercially viable consumer experiences rather than awareness campaigns. Leads town-centre and coastal regeneration that gets delivered: HemingwayDesign’s Andover masterplan won 97% community backing and helped unlock Levelling Up funding, with current place-brand work in Fareham and prior visions for York, Lowestoft, and Kidderminster. Brings an unusually direct view on what makes places, products, and brands resonate, formed by working with Wimpey, TfL, Shelter, the National Trust, Girlguiding, the Southbank Centre, and more than forty local authorities. Biography highlights Co-founder of Red or Dead; won British Fashion Council Streetstyle Designer of the Year three consecutive years, 1996 to 1998; brand sold to Pentland Group in 1999. Co-founder of HemingwayDesign, the multi-disciplinary studio behind the 760-home Staiths South Bank development in Gateshead, awarded Housing Design Awards, Best Housing-Led Regeneration Project by Building Magazine, and Building for Life. Gave evidence to House of Lords select committees on housebuilding standards, and co-designed Transport for London’s staff uniform with 16,000 employees and Girlguiding’s with more than 53,000 girls and women. Co-founder of Festival of Thrift, the UK’s first large-scale festival of sustainable living, launched in 2013 and now a permanent fixture in the North East cultural calendar. Co-founder of Charity Super.Mkt with TRAID’s Maria Chenoweth; pre-loved fashion concept that launched at Brent Cross in January 2023 and has since traded in Westfield, Bond Street, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Oxford, Bluewater, and Bristol. MBE, 2006, for services to the design and fashion industries; Professor of Built Environment at Northumbria University; honorary doctorates from Wolverhampton, Lancaster, and Stafford. Biography Red or Dead started on a Camden Market stall in the early 1980s and ended in 1999 as a Pentland Group acquisition, with three consecutive British Fashion Council Streetstyle Designer of the Year awards along the way. That trajectory, market trader to multi-million-pound exit, is the foundation Wayne Hemingway has been building on for twenty-five years. HemingwayDesign, founded with his wife and business partner Gerardine in 1999, was set up explicitly around affordable and social design. The studio’s signature project, Staiths South Bank in Gateshead, was the practical answer to Hemingway’s “Wimpeyfication and Barrattification” critique of British mass house-building. 760 homes were built with Wimpey on a Homezone model that re-thought streets, parking, and play, and the scheme won Housing Design Awards, Building Magazine’s Best Housing-Led Regeneration Project, and Building for Life. The same instinct, identify a category that has stopped trying and rebuild it with design at the centre, runs through everything that followed. Festival of Thrift, co-founded in 2013, made sustainability a free family weekend rather than a guilt trip. Charity Super.Mkt, launched at Brent Cross in January 2023 with TRAID’s Maria Chenoweth, turned charity-shop fashion into a destination format and reported £3 million in pre-loved sales inside two years. The same approach now drives HemingwayDesign’s town-centre work: the Andover masterplan won 97% community support and helped secure Levelling Up funding, with current place-brand work in Fareham and visions delivered for York, Lowestoft, and Kidderminster. For organisations the value is specific: a designer-entrepreneur with the credentials of a fashion founder and the track record of a public-realm developer, who can talk credibly to boards about brand, to operators about retail, and to leadership teams about why design-led businesses outlast design-decorated ones. He is an MBE, a Professor of Built Environment at Northumbria, and an author, but the argument is the work itself. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and design-led business building Brand and creative direction Sustainability and the circular economy Place-making, regeneration, and the future of the high street Affordable housing and mass-market design Retail futures and pre-loved consumer behaviour Festivals, culture, and community-led commercial models Ideal for Founders, CEOs, and creative directors of consumer brands. Property developers, housebuilders, and local authority leadership teams responsible for placemaking and regeneration. Retail and hospitality leaders rebuilding propositions for second-hand, sustainable, and experience-led formats. Cultural organisations, charities, and festival operators looking to commercialise purpose without losing it. Audience outcomes A working view of how Red or Dead and HemingwayDesign turned design instinct into commercial categories that lasted. A clearer sense of where sustainability becomes a viable consumer business rather than a marketing position. Specific lessons from Staiths South Bank, Festival of Thrift, and Charity Super.Mkt on building new categories from a standing start. Direct, plainly spoken provocations on brand, place, and the social value of design that audiences leave talking about.

Why organisations work with Will Hutton Three decades of macro-economic analysis tested in public, from The State We’re In in 1995 through This Time No Mistakes in 2024, so the framework is not a recent rebrand. A working seat inside the institutions that shape British policy: the Hutton Review of Fair Pay in the Public Sector, the Commission on Creative Industries, the EU Kok Commission, and the National Institute for Economic and Social Research. A genuinely structural argument on corporate purpose through The Purposeful Company, used by boards rethinking governance, executive pay and stakeholder accountability. Editorial and broadcast judgement built over years as Editor-in-Chief of The Observer and Economics Editor at Newsnight, which makes him unusually clear on which economic stories matter and which do not. Equally credible on China, Europe and the United States, so a board worrying about exposure across all three gets one coherent analysis rather than three partial ones. Biography highlights President of the Academy of Social Sciences. Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, 2011 to 2020. Co-chair of The Purposeful Company; co-founder and chair of the Big Innovation Centre. Former Chief Executive of The Work Foundation; former Editor-in-Chief of The Observer; former Economics Editor of BBC Newsnight and The Guardian. Author of seven books on political economy, including The State We’re In (1995) and This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain (2024). Chair of the Hutton Review of Fair Pay in the Public Sector (2010 to 2011) and the Commission on Creative Industries (2007); rapporteur to the EU Kok Commission (2004). Biography The State We’re In sold more copies than any British political-economy book since 1945. It set the terms of a debate, on short-termism, on the costs of financialised capitalism, on what serious institutional reform would look like, that the country has been having ever since. Thirty years later, This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain returns to the same argument under new conditions and was reviewed in the Financial Times, the LSE Review of Books and the Literary Review. What sits behind both books is an unusually wide working footprint. Hutton has been Editor-in-Chief of The Observer, Economics Editor at Newsnight and The Guardian, Chief Executive of The Work Foundation, and Principal of Hertford College, Oxford. He chaired the Hutton Review of Fair Pay in the Public Sector for the Coalition government and the Commission on Creative Industries for the Labour government, and was rapporteur to the EU Kok Commission. The current focus is institutional. As co-chair of The Purposeful Company he works with boards and asset managers on what corporate purpose, governance and executive pay should look like if shareholder primacy is no longer the working assumption. As President of the Academy of Social Sciences and chair of the Big Innovation Centre, he sits across the British social science and innovation policy systems. For senior audiences, the value is in the synthesis. Hutton reads China, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom as one connected system, and his Observer column is the long-running test bed. A board trying to make capital, governance and political-risk decisions in that environment gets a single coherent reading from a single voice with thirty years of public track record. Key speaking topics The British and European political economy Corporate purpose, governance and executive pay China, the United States and the future of the global economy Stakeholder capitalism and institutional reform The future of work and the social contract Innovation policy and industrial strategy Fairness, inequality and public sector reform Ideal for Boards and executive committees of UK and European corporates assessing geopolitical and macro exposure Asset managers, pension funds and institutional investors recalibrating governance and stewardship expectations Government, regulator and think-tank audiences working on industrial strategy, public sector reform or corporate governance Senior leadership programmes at business schools and professional services firms Audience outcomes A working map of how the British, European, Chinese and US economies now connect, and where the pressure points sit A clear view of what corporate purpose and stakeholder governance mean in practice for board agendas, pay and stewardship An informed reading of how UK political and policy shifts feed through to corporate operating conditions A sharper sense of which economic news is structural and which is noise