Resilience & Stress Management speakers

Why organisations work with Damon Dunn He has built and run the businesses he talks about. A 38-unit franchise system, a 31-property retail portfolio with tenants such as Walmart and CVS, and three CEO seats give him P&L credibility most leadership speakers do not have. His Hoover Institution work on welfare-to-work, K-14 education and workforce skilling connects boardroom growth questions to the labour and human-capital realities that actually determine whether a scale-up works. His path from severe poverty in Fort Worth to Stanford, the NFL and a multi-company operating career gives audiences a resilience story that is specific and verifiable, not generic. He is fluent in two registers buyers rarely get in one room: operator and policy fellow. That makes him useful for leadership offsites that need both growth substance and a wider economic frame. Biography highlights Hoover Institution Fellow, Stanford University, working on economic mobility, welfare reform and skills-based education. Author of Punting Poverty: Breaking the Chains of Welfare (Pacific Research Institute). Three-time CEO. Current CEO of Sagan Sign Talent. Founder of Lagunita Franchise Operations, scaled to 38 Dunkin locations across six states. Co-founder of Tricor SW Corporation, which developed 31 retail properties. BA, Public Policy, Stanford University. Harvard Business School Executive Education (2005). Former NFL wide receiver: Jacksonville Jaguars, Cleveland Browns, New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys. Republican nominee for California Secretary of State, 2010. Founder of Long Beach College Prep Academy, which has sent 158 students from low-income families to college. Biography Build a 38-unit franchise system from a single location and you learn quickly which growth ideas survive contact with payroll, leases and operators on a Tuesday morning. Damon Dunn has done the work three times as a CEO, in franchising at Lagunita, in retail development at Tricor, and most recently in industrial talent at Sagan Sign Talent. Tricor developed 31 retail properties across the United States, securing tenants including Walmart and CVS. Lagunita scaled to 38 Dunkin locations across six states, with around 500 employees and roughly thirty million dollars in revenue. The throughline is the same: capital deployed against real assets, real customers and real labour markets, with a P&L that has to clear at the end of every period. Alongside the operating work, Dunn is a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, where he writes on welfare reform, K-14 education and the skills-based pathways that actually move people out of poverty. His book Punting Poverty: Breaking the Chains of Welfare, published with the Pacific Research Institute, sets out a workable agenda for that mobility question. He was the Republican nominee for California Secretary of State in 2010. His own route from severe poverty in Fort Worth to a Stanford scholarship, four NFL teams and a working operator’s career gives the policy argument something most policy arguments lack: an author who has been the subject. Boards and leadership teams get a speaker who can work the labour question from inside the labour market, not from a podium above it. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scaling Growth strategy under capital and labour constraints Economic mobility and workforce skilling Leadership across business, sport and policy Resilience and high-performance under pressure Public policy on welfare-to-work and K-14 education Ideal for CEOs, founders and country managers running scale-up plays in capital-constrained conditions. Boards and executive teams looking for a credible operator’s view alongside macro and policy framing. Industry conferences in franchising, retail, real estate and consumer where unit economics drive growth. Leadership offsites that want substance on resilience without the standard sports-keynote arc. Audience outcomes A working operator’s view of how franchise and retail systems actually scale, with the trade-offs named. A clear link between workforce policy, skills and the practical labour economics inside a growing business. A resilience narrative grounded in named institutions and verifiable career stages, not motivational abstraction. Useable language for leaders trying to communicate ambition without overpromising on capital or timelines.

Why organisations work with Damon Hill His championship was not won from a position of privilege or natural advantage. Hill self-financed his junior career, started F1 with a team that folded mid-season, and was dismissed by Williams on the day he became World Champion. The argument for persistence and composure under adversity is the literal story of his career, not a theme applied to it afterwards. Across three consecutive seasons his primary rival was Michael Schumacher. In two of them, the championship was settled at the final race. That direct, tested experience of executing under maximum competitive scrutiny, when everything is at stake and a better-resourced rival is closing, is specific to him and cannot be replicated by other speakers in this topic area. As one of only two sons of an F1 World Champion to win the title themselves, Hill brings a distinctive perspective on performing under inherited expectation, legacy pressure, and public scrutiny; a dynamic immediately recognisable to second-generation business leaders, acquired organisations, and teams carrying institutional reputations. His autobiography, Watching the Wheels (Pan Macmillan, 2016), disclosed post-retirement depression with unusual candour for an elite sportsperson of his generation. That frankness about the psychological cost of sustained high performance gives him credibility in discussions about mental resilience that most athlete speakers avoid. His tenure as BRDC President (2006-2011) required institutional leadership in a complex stakeholder environment, including negotiating the 17-year contract that secured the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. It is a demonstrable leadership record beyond the cockpit, relevant to audiences dealing with governance, stakeholder management, and long-term institutional decisions. Biography highlights 1996 FIA F1 World Drivers’ Champion with Williams; 22 Grand Prix victories across eight seasons One of only two sons of an F1 World Champion to win the title themselves Twice named BBC Sports Personality of the Year (1994 and 1996) BRDC President (2006-2011), succeeding Sir Jackie Stewart; negotiated the 17-year contract securing the British Grand Prix at Silverstone Author of Watching the Wheels (Pan Macmillan, 2016), a candid account of elite performance, grief, and post-career depression Sky Sports F1 pundit for 13 seasons (2012-2024); appointed Williams F1 Ambassador in February 2026 Biography The 1996 Formula One Drivers’ Championship was not won by the most naturally gifted driver on the grid. Hill self-financed his junior career, started F1 with a team that folded mid-season, and was told his services were no longer required by Williams on the day he became champion. The title was built through persistence, technical precision, and composure under conditions designed to break both. What gives Hill’s perspective organisational value is the specificity of those conditions. Across three consecutive seasons, his primary rival was Michael Schumacher. In two of them the championship was decided at the final race, including the notorious 1994 finale in Adelaide. Maintaining judgment and execution quality when pressure is at its most extreme is the argument his career makes, and it maps directly to what organisations face in genuinely competitive markets. After retirement, Hill served as President of the British Racing Drivers’ Club from 2006 to 2011, succeeding Sir Jackie Stewart. He negotiated the 17-year contract that secured the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and oversaw the circuit’s major redevelopment. It was institutional leadership in a complex stakeholder environment – a different dimension to the individual performance story, and a credible one. Hill’s autobiography, Watching the Wheels (Pan Macmillan, 2016), disclosed post-retirement depression with unusual candour for an elite sportsperson of his generation. That frankness about the psychological cost of sustained performance gives him a credibility that statistics alone cannot. And as one of only two sons of an F1 World Champion to have won the title, his perspective on legacy, expectation, and self-determination is specific to him. Key speaking topics High performance under competitive pressure Leadership and decision-making in extreme conditions Resilience and recovery from sustained adversity Team performance and composure under scrutiny Risk management in high-stakes environments Performance culture in elite sport Institutional leadership and stakeholder negotiation Ideal for Senior leadership and C-suite teams preparing for periods of intense competitive pressure or strategic inflection Sales, trading, and performance-led organisations benchmarking mindset and execution against elite standards HR, talent, and organisational development leaders working on resilience, psychological safety, and sustained performance Financial services, professional services, and corporate conference audiences seeking leadership insight grounded in direct competitive experience Audience outcomes A clear framework for understanding how composure and judgment quality, not raw capability, determine outcomes when competitive pressure is highest Practical insight into how elite performers and teams sustain execution quality through adversity, loss, and periods of institutional change A model for distinguishing between risk aversion and disciplined risk management, drawn from direct competitive experience in an unforgiving environment Greater awareness of the psychological dimensions of peak performance and the personal cost of sustained high achievement Specific lessons applicable to performance culture, team alignment, and decision-making under pressure in corporate contexts

Why organisations work with Dan Hunt He has built the performance engine, not just coached inside one. The GB women’s endurance programme he took over in 2005 went from uncompetitive to delivering Olympic medals in under three years. His career is a rare controlled experiment in whether performance infrastructure transfers. He has run it in track cycling, professional road cycling at Team Sky, Premier League academy football, Olympic snow sports, and now GB Surfing. Q Division, the innovation unit he set up at British Ski and Snowboard, is a concrete example of how a small, properly scoped R and D function finds gains a larger organisation would miss. He speaks with specific case material from environments where the scoreboard is public and unforgiving, which is closer to the conditions a senior leadership team actually operates in than most sport-to-business framing allows. Biography highlights Led the turnaround of the Great Britain women’s endurance cycling programme from 2005, contributing to Olympic medals at Beijing 2008. Coached the GB men’s team pursuit to Olympic gold at London 2012. Appointed Sports Director at Team Sky for the 2013 season, during the period of consecutive Tour de France wins. Head of Elite Performance at the Premier League, working on academy performance systems. Performance Director at British Ski and Snowboard across alpine, freestyle, snowboard, cross-country, ski jumping, speed skiing and telemark; founded Q Division, the federation’s innovation unit. Executive Performance Director of GB Surfing from 2023. Biography Most organisations can point to a period of good results. Far fewer can explain why those results held, or why they did not. The distinction matters because the job of a senior leader is rarely to produce a single peak. It is to build the thing that produces peaks repeatedly. That is the problem Hunt has spent his career on. In 2005 he took over a Great Britain women’s endurance cycling programme that was not competitive, and inside three years it was delivering Olympic medals. He then switched to the men’s team pursuit and the group won gold at London 2012. The common thread across both was not a single charismatic intervention. It was an explicit, transferable system for how talent, coaching, data and decision rights fit together. Team Sky appointed him Sports Director for the 2013 season, a period that coincided with consecutive Tour de France wins. He went on to run elite performance at the Premier League, working on academy-stage talent systems, and then joined British Ski and Snowboard as Performance Director. There he built Q Division, a small innovation unit focused on the kind of marginal gains that a federation structure usually cannot produce on its own. In 2023 he took on the Executive Performance Director role at GB Surfing, now building the same architecture in a sport with almost no existing elite infrastructure in Britain. What makes Hunt useful in a boardroom is not a stock set of sport analogies. It is that he has rebuilt performance systems in five very different contexts, and can be specific about what travels, what does not, and why senior teams routinely misread the difference. Key speaking topics High-performance systems design Leadership under competitive pressure Talent pathways and academy development Culture change in medal-winning environments Marginal gains and performance innovation units Coaching teams through succession and reinvention Transfer of elite-sport practice to business leadership Ideal for CEO and board offsites framing a multi-year performance or culture reset CHROs and talent leads rebuilding pathways, academies, or internal development systems Leadership teams under acute competitive pressure where results are public Transformation leads accountable for sustained, not one-off, performance uplift Audience outcomes A sharper distinction between one-off results and a system that produces them repeatedly Specific case material from five elite programmes, not generic sport-to-business analogy A clearer view of how small innovation units earn their keep inside a larger organisation A working mental model for the handover points where high-performance cultures most often break

Why organisations work with Dan O’Neill He is the first openly LGBTQ+ presenter to front a major-network wildlife series, which gives inclusion programmes a credible external voice from a STEM and field science career, not a corporate one. His material is built from named expeditions with the Snow Leopard Trust, Philippine Eagle Foundation, and Hyderabad Tiger Conservation Society, so the resilience and decision-making content is grounded in specific places and stakes. He carries a working scientific credential, an Honorary Research Associate role and PhD candidacy at Bristol Veterinary School, which lets sustainability and conservation themes land with audiences who are sceptical of branded ESG narrative. He has been recognised by Attitude Magazine as a 101 Trailblazer in STEM in 2025, which gives Pride, ERG, and inclusion programming a current and verifiable name rather than a legacy one. Biography highlights Host of Giants (Curiosity Stream, 2023), Snow Leopards with Dan O’Neill (Love Nature, Sky TV), and Zombie Animals (National Geographic, 2024) Co-presenter, Tiger Island (BBC One, 2026) First Explorer in Residence, Snow Leopard Trust Honorary Research Associate and Lecturer, University of Bristol; PhD candidate, Bristol Veterinary School Wildscreen Panda Award nominee for Snow Leopards with Dan O’Neill Attitude Magazine 101 Trailblazers, STEM category lead, 2025 Biography Most large organisations now have an inclusion policy that reads well on paper. What they often lack is a visible external figure from a technical or scientific career who can hold the room without flattening the topic into a wellness session. That gap is the territory O’Neill works in. He came to public attention as the first openly LGBTQ+ presenter to host a wildlife series for a major network, Giants on Curiosity Stream in 2023. The work since has built out, with Snow Leopards with Dan O’Neill for Love Nature and Sky TV, Zombie Animals for National Geographic, and the BBC One co-presenter role on Tiger Island. Snow Leopards was nominated for a Wildscreen Panda Award. The scientific credential is current, not retired. O’Neill is an Honorary Research Associate and Lecturer at the University of Bristol and a PhD candidate at Bristol Veterinary School, working on secretive carnivores and the field technology used to monitor them. He was the Snow Leopard Trust’s first Explorer in Residence and has run expedition work across Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, India, Mexico, Guyana, and the Yucatan. For corporate audiences this combination matters. Inclusion content delivered by a working field biologist sits differently in the room from inclusion content delivered as a topic in its own right. Attitude Magazine named him a 101 Trailblazer in 2025, leading the STEM category, which is the relevant credential when an organisation is staffing a Pride keynote or an ERG event with someone whose authority is built outside the corporate world. Key speaking topics LGBTQ+ visibility in STEM and field science Resilience and decision-making in remote environments Conservation and biodiversity storytelling Sustainability framed through field reporting, not policy Expedition leadership under physical and logistical pressure Wildlife filmmaking and the craft of translating science to audiences Ideal for Heads of DEI, ERG leads, and Pride event organisers commissioning external speakers with a credential outside the corporate sector CSR and sustainability teams looking for conservation storytelling that does not lean on branded ESG language Internal conference programmes building a culture or values strand around visibility and resilience Audiences in science, technology, and engineering functions where a working scientist lands more credibly than a generalist motivational speaker Audience outcomes A current example of what authentic visibility looks like in a non-corporate STEM career Named field stories from snow leopard, tiger, and jaguar work that anchor abstract inclusion or resilience points in concrete terrain A vocabulary for talking about sustainability that draws on biodiversity fieldwork rather than ESG framework language A clearer view of how external storytelling moves a complex scientific subject inside a general audience

Why organisations work with Daniel Chappell A first-hand account of raising significant early-stage capital with no trading history, which is the situation most internal innovation teams quietly find themselves in when pitching new ventures to their own boards. A working operator’s view of UNTIL, a business that pairs physical premises in Soho, Liverpool Street and Marylebone with a digital membership model. Useful for any leadership team thinking about hybrid product-and-place propositions. An unusually honest voice on neurodiversity from a founder who runs a company while managing dyslexia and dyspraxia, rather than a clinical or HR-led perspective. A high-performance sports background that translates the language of marginal gains, recovery, and team standards into the running of a commercial business, without leaning on tired sporting metaphor. Biography highlights Co-founder of UNTIL, a members business for freelance health, wellness and medical practitioners operating from three central London sites. UNTIL counts Steven Bartlett among its investors and co-founders, following a high-profile early funding round. MSc in Strength and Conditioning, Cardiff Metropolitan University. BSc in Sports and Exercise Science, St Mary’s University, Twickenham. Over a decade working inside high-performance sporting environments before launching his own ventures. Speaks publicly about dyslexia and dyspraxia, and treats neurodiversity as part of his founder identity, not a sidebar. Biography Service industries built on individual practitioners tend to share the same problem. The talent is excellent and the business model is fragile. UNTIL, the London business Daniel Chappell co-founded, was built around that gap: a members club and workspace that lets freelance health, wellness and medical professionals operate from premium premises in Soho, Liverpool Street and Marylebone without carrying the cost of their own. The route in matters. More than a decade inside high-performance sport gave Daniel an instinct for how elite practitioners work, what they need around them, and where their time is wasted. An MSc in Strength and Conditioning from Cardiff Metropolitan University and a BSc in Sports and Exercise Science from St Mary’s University, Twickenham sit behind that view. The transition from working with athletes to building a company for the people who work with athletes is the spine of the story. UNTIL has since attracted Steven Bartlett as an investor and co-founder, and has built a community of more than 300 practitioners across more than 40 disciplines. For a buyer, the value of the talk is not the milestone list. It is what the talk reveals about persuading investors with no trading history, building a founding team that can scale, and running a young company in public. Daniel is also open about managing dyslexia and dyspraxia as a founder, and speaks to neurodiversity from the inside of a working business. That perspective is useful in any leadership conversation about how organisations actually get the best out of people whose minds are wired differently from the average hire. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founding-team dynamics Early-stage fundraising and investor relationships Building a business in the health and wellness sector High performance applied to commercial environments Neurodiversity in leadership and at work Team culture in young companies Resilience and personal performance for founders Ideal for Leadership offsites for scale-ups and founder-led businesses Corporate innovation, ventures and intrapreneurship teams HR and people leaders building practical neurodiversity programmes Wellbeing, benefits and employee-experience conferences Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what early-stage investors actually respond to when there is no trading history to point at. A practical framing of how a young founding team divides work, makes decisions, and survives the first eighteen months. A working model for treating neurodiversity as a commercial asset inside a team, with examples from a live business. Language for translating high-performance habits into a corporate or scale-up context without resorting to sports cliché.

Why organisations work with Danny Rensch Inside view of a bootstrapped consumer platform that reached a billion-dollar valuation with no venture capital, told by the operator who built its content, events and media strategy from the inside. Direct authorship of Chess.com’s signature commercial properties, including the Speed Chess Championship, the PRO Chess League, Titled Tuesday, and the PogChamps streamer events that opened chess to a non-chess audience. A working framework for using a 1,500-year-old game as a commercial asset: turning a niche pastime into a streaming category, an esports format, and a content engine for 40 million monthly users. Memoir-grade material on resilience and self-leadership grounded in a specific, publicly documented personal history, published by Hachette in 2025 and endorsed by Jeannette Walls and Ben Mezrich. Biography highlights Co-founder and Chief Chess Officer, Chess.com, the platform with over 225 million registered members and roughly 40 million monthly active users. International Master (FIDE) and former Arizona youngest National Master (1999); 1998 Elementary National Champion, 2000 Junior High National Champion, 2004 National High School Co-Champion. Author of Dark Squares: How Chess Saved My Life (Hachette Book Group, 2025), reviewed by Kirkus as “A winning memoir” with endorsements from Jeannette Walls and Ben Mezrich. Created and hosted the 2016 $40,000 GM Blitz Battle Championship featuring Magnus Carlsen, the format that became the Chess.com Speed Chess Championship. Hosted PogChamps, the streamer chess tournament credited with bringing chess to mainstream Twitch and YouTube audiences during 2020. Speaker at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference; profiled by Fortune in 2025 on the Chess.com growth story. Biography Chess.com is one of the few consumer platforms of its scale that never took venture capital. Over fifteen years, the company grew from a small bootstrapped operation into a service with more than 225 million registered members, around 40 million monthly active users, and a valuation above one billion dollars by 2023. Danny Rensch co-founded the company in 2009 and built its content, events and media operations. The competitive layer of the business is his work. He created and hosted the 2016 $40,000 GM Blitz Battle Championship featuring Magnus Carlsen, the format that grew into the Speed Chess Championship. He hosted the first PogChamps in 2020, the streamer tournament that pulled a non-chess audience onto the platform and re-cast a 1,500-year-old game as a streaming category. The PRO Chess League and Titled Tuesday sit in the same portfolio. Before the company, there was a player. Rensch is a FIDE International Master and a former scholastic champion: Elementary National Champion in 1998, Arizona’s youngest National Master in 1999, Junior High National Champion in 2000, and National High School Co-Champion in 2004, the year he earned his first IM norm. His memoir, Dark Squares: How Chess Saved My Life, was published by Hachette in 2025 and describes a childhood inside the Church of Immortal Consciousness, an Arizona cult, and chess as the route out. Kirkus called it “A winning memoir.” The commercial argument and the personal argument reinforce each other. A board considering how a niche product becomes a global consumer category, or a leadership team studying the discipline required to operate without external capital for fifteen years, will find specific operating material in the Chess.com story. A management audience working on resilience and decision-making under pressure has, in the same speaker, a primary source. Key speaking topics Bootstrapped consumer platform growth Building category-defining digital products Content, community and commercial events strategy Lessons from chess for business strategy and decision-making Resilience and self-leadership through adversity Streaming, esports and the modernisation of legacy categories Ideal for CEOs and founders of consumer platforms, marketplaces and subscription businesses CMOs, CCOs and heads of content building community-led growth Boards and leadership teams of bootstrapped or founder-led companies Conferences on entrepreneurship, scale-up leadership, sports business and digital media Audience outcomes A concrete view of how a bootstrapped consumer platform compounds product, content and events decisions over fifteen years. Operating examples of turning a legacy category into a streaming-first business, drawn from the Speed Chess Championship and PogChamps. A working language for applying chess concepts (anticipation, calculated risk, pattern recognition) to commercial strategy without metaphor inflation. A grounded perspective on resilience, decision-making and personal recovery, sourced from a published memoir rather than generic motivational material.

Why organisations work with Danny Webber He played professionally across four divisions, from Manchester United’s youth setup through Premier League football with Sheffield United to non-league title-winning sides at Salford City. He has lived the full spectrum of elite team environments, not one rarefied tier of it. He has reinvented himself twice since retiring as a player: as a pundit and co-commentator working regularly across BBC Sport, Sky Sports, MUTV, ITV and talkSPORT, and as founder and CEO of his own sports agency, Autograph Sports Management. Through Autograph he mentors young athletes on building professional and personal brands, which gives him a current operator’s view of talent development, not retired-player nostalgia. His broadcast career means he can hold a room, run a Q and A, and host a panel without external moderation, which materially expands how he can be used at an event. Biography highlights Former professional footballer for Manchester United, Watford, Sheffield United, Portsmouth, Leeds United (loan), Accrington Stanley and Salford City. Helped Sheffield United win promotion to the Premier League in the 2005-06 season. England Under-20 international. Northern Premier League Division One North champion (2014-15) and Premier Division play-off winner (2016) with Salford City. Pundit and co-commentator for BBC Sport, Sky Sports, MUTV, ITV Sport, talkSPORT and BBC 5 Live. Founder and CEO of Autograph Sports Management, a sports and commercial agency representing players and building athlete brands. Biography A teenager scoring 16 goals in 11 youth appearances for Manchester United is normally on a single track. Webber turned down a three-year contract at Old Trafford at the end of the 2002-03 season to chase senior football elsewhere. The decision shaped everything that followed: a deliberate move toward first-team minutes over reputation. What came next was a Premier League career built around adaptability. Watford, where he scored 21 goals across 72 games. Sheffield United, where his goals contributed to promotion to the Premier League in 2005-06. Portsmouth, Leeds United and Accrington Stanley followed, then a title-winning run with Salford City in the Northern Premier League. Few players cover that range of clubs and divisions inside one career. The second act has been the harder one. After retiring he built a media presence as a pundit and co-commentator across BBC Sport, Sky Sports, MUTV, ITV and talkSPORT, and founded Autograph Sports Management, a player representation and brand-building agency. He now mentors young athletes through the same career decisions he made himself. That is the substance he brings to a corporate audience. Not the highlight reel, but the working knowledge of how elite teams hold together, what reinvention costs when the first career ends, and how to keep performing when the conditions keep changing. Key speaking topics Performance and resilience in elite team environments Career transition and reinvention after a defined first chapter Building and mentoring young talent Mindset and motivation under pressure Personal brand and reputation in public-facing careers Leadership lessons from professional sport Ideal for Sales, commercial and high-performance teams running annual conferences or kick-off events. Talent, learning and graduate development leads designing mentoring and early-career programmes. Sport, broadcast and entertainment organisations briefing on athlete welfare and career-after-career questions. Hosts of leadership or after-dinner formats wanting a sports speaker who can also moderate or interview. Audience outcomes A grounded view of what performance in elite team environments actually requires day to day. A first-hand account of career reinvention, including the periods that do not work. Practical reflections on mentoring younger talent through high-pressure decisions. A useable read on how reputation and personal brand are built in public-facing careers.

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

Why organisations work with Darren Woodson A rare second-act credibility: 12 NFL seasons, 14 years on ESPN, and an operating role at a global commercial real estate firm. Leaders hear from someone who has rebuilt his expertise twice over. A specific framework for culture, not generic motivation. The “Creating Cultures of Excellence” model names four conditions a team must meet to perform at the top: hard change, honest confrontation, healthy competition and heartfelt character. First-hand authority on what high-performance environments actually feel like, drawn from a locker room that won three Super Bowls in four seasons and from twelve years inside one of the most scrutinised franchises in American sport. A practitioner’s view of reinvention. As co-founder and chairman of CounterFind, Woodson has built a venture-backed technology company from scratch, which gives him real material on entrepreneurship, founder transition and operating discipline beyond the locker room. Biography highlights Three-time Super Bowl champion (XXVII, XXVIII, XXX) with the Dallas Cowboys. Five-time Pro Bowl selection and the Cowboys’ all-time leading tackler with 1,350 career tackles. Inducted into the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor (2015), the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. NFL analyst at ESPN for 14 years following retirement from playing. Managing Principal at Cresa, the world’s largest occupier-only commercial real estate advisory firm. Co-founder and chairman of CounterFind, a Dallas-based technology company that uses image recognition to remove counterfeit merchandise listings from Amazon, Facebook and Instagram. Biography A team that has won three championships in four seasons is not held together by talent alone. It is held together by the willingness to have difficult conversations every day. That is the environment Darren Woodson grew up inside as a strong safety for the Dallas Cowboys, and it is the lens he brings to the leadership teams he now advises. Over twelve NFL seasons, Woodson became the Cowboys’ all-time leading tackler with 1,350 career tackles, earned five Pro Bowl selections and won Super Bowls XXVII, XXVIII and XXX. He was inducted into the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor in 2015 alongside the franchise’s most enduring figures. The second act has been deliberate. Fourteen years as an ESPN analyst gave Woodson a public communicator’s discipline. He then moved into commercial real estate, where he is now Managing Principal at Cresa, the only global advisory firm representing occupiers rather than landlords. In parallel, he co-founded CounterFind, a venture-backed technology company that has removed counterfeit listings worth millions from Amazon, Facebook and Instagram. His keynote work is organised around a framework he calls Creating Cultures of Excellence, built on four conditions: hard change, honest confrontation, healthy competition and heartfelt character. The argument is that average cultures avoid all four. Winning ones, in sport and in business, build the muscle to live inside them. Woodson has tested the proposition at the top of professional sport and in the rebuilding of a commercial career, and he speaks to it as a practitioner. Key speaking topics Building cultures of excellence Leadership and team performance under pressure Change management and organisational transformation Resilience and reinvention Allyship and crucial conversations Entrepreneurship and second-career leadership Ideal for C-suite leadership teams are setting cultural standards for their next operating cycle Sales kickoffs and commercial leadership offsites CHROs and people leaders running culture transformation programmes Board and partner meetings at professional services firms Audience outcomes A clear four-part test for whether their team is genuinely competing or quietly settling Practical language for having the honest conversations leaders most often avoid A perspective on reinvention drawn from someone who has rebuilt his career twice Conviction that culture is built through specific behaviours, not slogans

Why organisations work with Dave Steele He turns an abstract inclusion agenda into a room of people who have felt something specific. Poetry, song and personal testimony land with audiences in a way a policy deck cannot. He brings a named platform behind the message: the Stand By Me RP community he founded in 2015 is one of the largest RP groups in the world, and his trilogy topped poetry charts in the US and Australia. Scientific and medical institutions trust him to carry the patient and lived-experience voice, from the National Eye Institute at NIH to a Roche ophthalmology feature and the American Foundation for the Blind. Few speakers on disability reach clinical and research audiences at that level. Brand and product work with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam gives him direct fluency in how large companies are approaching accessibility in practice, not just in principle. He delivers as a performer as well as a speaker, which makes him suited to conference mainstage, awards nights and internal culture events where a standard keynote would not move the room. Biography highlights Author of the “Stand By Me RP” poetry trilogy (2016 to 2018); Volume I reached number one poetic release in the US and Australia in its first week. Founder of the Stand By Me RP online community (2015), one of the largest Retinitis Pigmentosa support groups on social media. Subject of the BBC documentary “The Film I’ll Never See” (BBC Our Lives, 2025). Emcee of the 24th Annual Helen Keller Achievement Awards, American Foundation for the Blind; opened the National Eye Institute Intramural Program retreat at NIH (2024). Gave a Special Presentation at the inaugural Personalized RegenMed Forum, hosted by biotech company Cellino in Cambridge, MA, sharing his experience of sight loss through poetry with an audience of regenerative-medicine developers, clinicians and researchers. Performed a commissioned poem at the Paralympic Heritage Flame Lighting Ceremony at Stoke Mandeville, birthplace of the Paralympic movement, ahead of Paris 2024. Trustee of Henshaws; featured by Roche as a change-maker in ophthalmology; collaborator with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam. Biography Most inclusion work still treats disability as an HR category. A poem, delivered in a room of executives, does something a training module cannot. It gives the audience a few minutes inside someone else’s life, and that is what Dave Steele’s work depends on. Steele was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa in 2014. He had been a singer and a car salesman; the diagnosis ended both careers and left him at home in Manchester with four children and mounting debt. In 2015 he started a Facebook page called “Stand By Me RP,” named after a song he had rewritten for a support group. It became one of the largest RP communities on social media and the seed of everything that followed. The poetry came next. His “Stand By Me RP” trilogy, released annually between 2016 and 2018, reached the top of poetry charts in the United States and Australia, and he has since written more than 700 poems and songs about sight loss. That reach is why leading research and clinical institutions invite him in: he emceed the 24th Helen Keller Achievement Awards for the American Foundation for the Blind, opened the National Eye Institute’s Intramural Program retreat at NIH in April 2024 at the invitation of its scientific director, and has been featured by Roche as a change-maker in ophthalmology. The organisational value is different from a typical DEI speaker. Steele does not offer a framework. He offers a specific voice that leaders can put in front of their people when they want an inclusion conversation to stop feeling procedural, supported by active work with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam on how accessibility actually shows up in product and brand. Key speaking topics Disability inclusion and lived experience Sight loss and visual impairment advocacy Resilience after a life-changing diagnosis Accessibility in product, brand and workplace Poetry and storytelling as communication Mental health and identity through chronic illness Patient voice in medical and research settings Ideal for CHRO, DEI and employee experience leaders running disability inclusion or accessibility programmes Healthcare, life sciences, pharmaceutical and ophthalmology audiences (clinicians, researchers and patient-experience teams) wanting an authentic patient voice Awards nights, conference mainstage slots and internal culture events that need a performer as well as a speaker Consumer, tech and retail brands working on accessibility in product and communications Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what a progressive sight loss diagnosis does to work, family and identity A sharper sense of where stated inclusion policies diverge from daily employee experience Specific references from brand and product work with companies like Apple, Meta and OrCam on accessibility in practice Poetry and spoken-word performance that anchors the message in memory long after the event A reframing of disability as an active contribution to an organisation, not a compliance line

Why organisations work with David Allen He speaks from inside the experience, not about it. A person describing decades of OCD, severe health anxiety and depression in their own words does work that a clinician or a policy lead cannot do. He is a trained Lived Experience Practitioner, formally accredited to use personal recovery to support others, and a People’s Champion with Champions for Change, the volunteer movement that succeeded the Time to Change campaign run by the charity Mind. The mental health talk, “Living with OCD: A Survivor’s Guide”, is autobiographical and practical at the same time: it covers triggers, daily impact and the coping strategies he has built, rather than general awareness messaging. He also offers researched social-history talks on Victorian England and storytelling travel sessions, which makes him a flexible choice for community groups, member associations and after-dinner programmes that want a single speaker for a varied evening. Biography highlights Lived Experience Practitioner working through Champions for Change, the volunteer movement that succeeded the Time to Change campaign of the mental health charity Mind. Holds the People’s Champion designation within that movement. Around 15 years as a professional public speaker, with festival appearances at Buxton, Edinburgh Fringe and Latitude. Member of the Dickens Fellowship, with a research focus on Victorian social and criminal history. Trained as a solicitor and as a primary school teacher before moving into full-time speaking. Regular speaker on the UK community-association circuit: U3A, Rotary, WI, Townswomen’s Guilds, Probus and 41 Clubs across the south east of England. Biography OCD is one of the most misunderstood common mental health conditions in the workplace. It is treated as a punchline about tidiness, when in clinical reality it is an anxiety disorder that can take hours out of a person’s day. Allen has lived with it since childhood, alongside depression and severe health anxiety, and has built a public talk out of that experience rather than out of theory. The credential that sits behind the talk is specific. After the pandemic, he trained as a Lived Experience Practitioner, the formal route by which people with their own history of mental illness are accredited to support others in recovery. He volunteers as a People’s Champion with Champions for Change, the local volunteer network that took over from the national Time to Change campaign run by Mind in 2022. That gives the OCD talk a grounding in something more than personal disclosure. The wider speaking career runs alongside that work. Allen trained as a solicitor and then as a primary school teacher before going full-time on the speaking circuit, where he has now been for around fifteen years. He is a member of the Dickens Fellowship and writes and performs researched talks on Victorian England, on Charles Dickens specifically, and on his own bicycle and hitchhiking journeys across Europe and North Africa. He has performed at Buxton Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe and Latitude. For a corporate audience, the value is narrow and specific: a first-person account of severe OCD, delivered by someone who has spent years working out how to talk about it in a room of strangers. For community associations, member groups and festival programmes, the range widens into Victorian history and travel storytelling. Key speaking topics Living with OCD and severe health anxiety Lived-experience mental health advocacy Stigma and mental illness in everyday life Victorian social history Charles Dickens and his world Long-distance bicycle and hitchhiking travel Ideal for Employee wellbeing programmes, mental health awareness weeks and stigma-reduction events inside large employers Healthcare and nursing audiences looking for a lived-experience voice alongside clinical content U3As, Rotary Clubs, WIs, Probus groups, 41 Clubs and similar community associations Literary festivals, history societies and after-dinner programmes booking storytelling sessions Audience outcomes A concrete understanding of what OCD looks like from the inside, beyond the cultural shorthand Specific coping strategies that one person has developed over decades of living with anxiety Permission to talk about mental health more openly inside teams and families For history audiences, a researched and entertaining window into Victorian social life

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