Resilience & Stress Management

Why organisations work with Anisha Joshi A clinician, not a wellness commentator. Osteopathic practice spanning over a decade, a multi-site clinic group, and a Penguin-published book on back pain give the room a credibility most workplace-wellbeing speakers lack. A clinical reading of burnout. She treats burnout as a physical process that accumulates in the body before it shows up in performance or absence data, which puts it on the risk register for HR and leadership. Named recognition: Principal of the Year from the Institute of Osteopathy (2019), and resident on-screen osteopath for ITV’s This Morning. The musculoskeletal cost of hybrid work, addressed specifically. Ergonomic assessment, posture, movement, and pain prevention applied to real desk and home-working setups. Changes employees can apply the same week, which is what HR and benefits teams need to see returned in engagement and absence data. Biography highlights Author of Heal Your Back: 4 Steps to a Pain-Free Life, Penguin (Vermilion), 2024. Principal of the Year, Institute of Osteopathy, 2019. Resident on-screen osteopath for ITV’s This Morning. Principal Osteopath and Clinic Director at Woodside Osteopathic Clinic, and co-founder of the Osteo Allies clinic group across London, Surrey, and Hertfordshire. Graduate of the British College of Osteopathic Medicine (BCOM), London. Clinical caseload spanning elite athletes, broadcasters, and senior executives alongside desk-based teams, with media commentary across The Telegraph, Vanity Fair, Women’s Health, and Hello!. Biography Back pain is the leading cause of disability among UK adults under 45, and hybrid work has turned desk-based musculoskeletal injury into an organisational problem rather than a personal one. The HSE counted 511,000 UK workers with a work-related musculoskeletal disorder in 2024/25, and 7.1 million working days lost to them. Most corporate wellbeing programmes still answer that with a gym subsidy and a leaflet. A graduate of the British College of Osteopathic Medicine, Anisha Joshi has practised osteopathy for over a decade and now directs the Osteo Allies clinic group across London, Surrey, and Hertfordshire. Her caseload runs from broadcasters and elite athletes to desk-based teams, which gives her a precise view of what separates the people who sustain high performance from those who break under it. Her book brings that clinical view into usable form. Heal Your Back: 4 Steps to a Pain-Free Life (Penguin, 2024) sets out a structured approach to managing back pain through movement, mindset, nutrition, and sleep, drawn from her own case files. The Institute of Osteopathy named her Principal of the Year in 2019, and she has been the resident on-screen osteopath for ITV’s This Morning. For corporate audiences she does something most wellbeing speakers cannot. She names what is physically wrong with the average hybrid workstation, and she treats burnout as a physical process that accumulates long before it surfaces in absence data. The practical question she leaves a room with is what to change before those numbers move. Key speaking topics Workplace ergonomics and musculoskeletal health Back pain prevention and management The physical accumulation of burnout Hybrid and remote-work wellbeing Physical sustainability in high performance The mind-body connection in pain and stress Posture, movement, and desk-based work Ideal for HR, people, and benefits leaders responsible for hybrid-work wellbeing and absence outcomes Health and safety, facilities, and workplace-design teams reviewing ergonomic standards Professional-services and finance firms with desk-bound, high-pressure workforces Women’s leadership programmes addressing the physical cost of sustained senior performance Audience outcomes A clinical, not anecdotal, picture of how hybrid working drives musculoskeletal injury Specific changes to workstation setup, posture, and movement that an employee can apply the same day The four-step approach to managing and preventing back pain from the Heal Your Back model How burnout builds physically before it shows in behaviour, and where to interrupt it A clearer line between psychological stress and physical symptoms, and what to do about both

Why organisations work with Estefania Cervantes She speaks from a documented turnaround, not a tagline. She lost her leg at 18 mid-degree, completed her studies at Universidad Iberoamericana, and built a registered Mexican civil association that delivers prosthetics and rehabilitation. Ampuvalia gives her a working operator’s vocabulary. Audiences hear from someone who has had to fund, govern, and scale a small organisation, which translates resilience into language a senior team recognises. Her book “Actitud Que Trasciende” gives Spanish-speaking audiences a structured account of recovery and reinvention they can hand to teams afterward, rather than a one-off keynote moment. She holds the 2015 Premio Ibero-Bremond-FICSAC Compromiso Social, an institutional recognition from a serious Mexican university, not a self-issued award. She has lived the inclusion conversation from the disability side without making it a compliance lecture, which is what most internal DEI programmes are quietly looking for. Biography highlights Founder of Ampuvalia, a Mexican civil association providing physical therapy, prosthetics, and peer support to the limb-loss community since 2015. Author of “Actitud Que Trasciende”, a Spanish-language book on rebuilding life and identity after limb loss. Recipient of the Premio Ibero-Bremond-FICSAC Compromiso Social, awarded by Universidad Iberoamericana. Featured climber on the 2019 ROMP Cotopaxi expedition, documented in the Merrell-produced short film “In Her Shoes”. Graduate in International Business Administration, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City. Bilingual speaker in Spanish and English, with a Latin American operating base that is uncommon on bureau rosters at this level. Biography A car accident in Mexico City interrupted a second-semester business student’s degree and removed her right leg. The student returned to Universidad Iberoamericana, finished her programme, and four years later registered Ampuvalia as a civil association to fund prosthetics and rehabilitation for other amputees in Mexico. That sequence of facts is the spine of her credibility. The work since has been operational rather than purely autobiographical. Ampuvalia coordinates physical therapy, prosthesis fitting, and peer-support sessions, the unglamorous middle of disability recovery that public storytelling usually skips. Her Spanish-language book “Actitud Que Trasciende” treats limb loss as a problem of identity and decision-making, not a story of triumph, which is what makes it usable inside coaching engagements. Universidad Iberoamericana awarded her the Premio Ibero-Bremond-FICSAC Compromiso Social in 2015 for that work, and the 2019 ROMP ascent of Cotopaxi placed her in the Merrell-produced documentary “In Her Shoes” alongside other amputee climbers. These are the named credentials. The reason to put her in front of a senior team is that she can describe, in operating terms, what it took to keep functioning when the original plan was no longer available, and translate that into something a leadership audience can use the next morning. Key speaking topics Resilience after acute personal setback Reinvention of identity and purpose Disability inclusion in Latin American workplaces Founding and running a mission-led nonprofit Executive coaching grounded in lived recovery Bilingual leadership for Spanish and English audiences Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads commissioning substantive disability inclusion content for Latin American or bilingual workforces Latin American leadership conferences and Spanish-language internal events Sales kick-offs and annual conferences seeking a credible resilience anchor speaker Executive coaching programmes in Mexico and the wider Spanish-speaking region Audience outcomes A working definition of resilience that survives contact with a real organisational setback A first-hand account of disability inclusion told without compliance language A model for how a small, mission-led organisation gets built and funded in Mexico A bilingual perspective that lands with Spanish-first audiences without translation flattening

Why organisations work with Emma Reed Turrell She brings the consulting room into the boardroom. The frameworks she uses with audiences are the same ones she works with in private clinical practice, not a borrowed model dressed up for corporate slides. Two trade-published books with named theses, Please Yourself (HarperCollins) on people-pleasing and What Am I Missing? (Penguin) on four blind-spot profiles, give her content a recognisable structure that audiences can act on after the session. Her four-blind-spot typology (The Gladiator, The Bridge, The Hustler, The Rock) gives teams a shared, non-judgemental language for the friction that usually goes unnamed in 1:1s and team reviews. Co-hosting Best Friend Therapy with Elizabeth Day, now in its seventh season, has trained her to translate clinical material into conversation that lands with non-specialist audiences without losing precision. MBACP-accredited practitioner status means employers can route sensitive content (boundaries, self-worth, conflict avoidance) through a clinician on the register, not a motivational speaker working in adjacent territory. Biography highlights Author of Please Yourself: How to Stop People-Pleasing and Transform the Way You Live, HarperCollins. Author of What Am I Missing? Discover the Four Blind Spots That Are Holding You Back, Penguin. Co-host of Best Friend Therapy podcast with Elizabeth Day, in its seventh season. MBACP-accredited psychotherapist running a private practice (The Therapy Loft). English graduate of Queens’ College, Cambridge; ten years in commercial roles before retraining. Corporate engagements named on her bureau profiles include Diageo, Sky, AstraZeneca, ClearScore, Evelyn Partners, and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Biography The most common complaints inside large organisations, people who cannot say no, leaders who cannot ask for help, talented staff who under-claim their work, sit downstream of the same psychological patterns that fill a therapist’s caseload. Emma Reed Turrell has spent fifteen years working with those patterns clinically, and her speaking is built directly on what she sees in the consulting room. She read English at Queens’ College, Cambridge, spent a decade in commercial roles, then retrained as a psychotherapist and became MBACP-accredited. She now runs a private practice, The Therapy Loft, alongside her writing and speaking. The two books, Please Yourself with HarperCollins on the structure of people-pleasing, and What Am I Missing? with Penguin on four named blind-spot profiles, are the source material for her keynote content. Her co-hosted podcast with Elizabeth Day, Best Friend Therapy, now in its seventh season, has built her a reach beyond the clinical audience and trained her to make therapeutic ideas usable in everyday work conversations. The result is a speaker who can hold a non-specialist audience for an hour on people-pleasing, imposter syndrome, or unconscious blind spots, and leave them with a vocabulary they can take back into their team. Organisations that have booked her include Diageo, Sky, AstraZeneca, ClearScore, Evelyn Partners, and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, employers for whom employee wellbeing and communication are not soft topics but live retention and productivity issues. Key speaking topics People-pleasing and workplace boundaries Imposter syndrome in high-performing teams Psychological blind spots and self-awareness Self-worth and confidence at work Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace Non-conflict communication Resilience and stress management Ideal for CHROs, heads of talent, and L&D leads designing wellbeing and communication programmes for the wider workforce. Women’s networks and emerging-leader cohorts wrestling with imposter syndrome and self-worth. Senior teams that want a shared language for the friction patterns showing up in 1:1s and reviews. Employee conferences and all-hands events where wellbeing content needs clinical weight rather than motivational gloss. Audience outcomes A named vocabulary for the people-pleasing, imposter, and blind-spot patterns that shape day-to-day work. Specific tools for setting boundaries and managing self-worth that audiences can use the following week. Recognition of which of the four blind-spot profiles (Gladiator, Bridge, Hustler, Rock) is most active in their own behaviour. Practical anxiety-management techniques drawn from her clinical practice, including the worry-box approach. Permission to treat wellbeing as a serious operational topic, not a soft benefit.

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

Why organisations work with Cole Brauer She has a first-person account of what it takes to run a high-stakes operation alone for 130 days, with no option to stop, and can translate that into language a board or executive team can actually use. She pairs the solo story with hard professional credibility: 2024 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, first all-female team to win the Bermuda One-Two, and a current seat on Team Malizia’s IMOCA 60 programme alongside Boris Herrmann. She speaks credibly about risk management and preparation, not as abstractions, but as the specific trade-offs that kept a 40-foot racing boat sailing through the Southern Ocean for four months. She reaches audiences outside the usual sailing world; her real-time documentation of the voyage built a following of nearly 400,000 people and changed who pays attention to offshore racing. She is a rare example of a young operator, not a retired one, describing lessons that are still being tested at elite level. Biography highlights First American woman to complete a solo, non-stop, unassisted circumnavigation, finishing second in the inaugural Global Solo Challenge in March 2024. 2024 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year (US Sailing). Co-skipper, Team Malizia, competing on the IMOCA 60 in The Ocean Race Europe and the Course des Caps. Skipper of Class40 First Light; winner of the 2023 Bermuda One-Two with Cat Chimney, the first all-female team to take the race. Set a new reference time for a solo circumnavigation on a 40-foot boat, around seven days inside the previous mark. Featured across NBC News, The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, and Robb Report for the Global Solo Challenge voyage. Biography Most people who survive 130 days alone at sea stop doing it afterwards. Cole Brauer came off the water in March 2024 as the first American woman to race solo, non-stop and unassisted around the world, and immediately began preparing for the next campaign. That sequence tells you most of what matters about how she works. The Global Solo Challenge took her 30,000 miles through the three Great Capes aboard First Light, a 40-foot Class40. She finished second overall out of 16 starters from 10 countries, set a new reference time for the class, and did it while injuring her ribs mid-race and managing a bout of dehydration that required her to insert her own IV under instruction from a remote medical team. US Sailing named her 2024 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year the following February. The racing record is not a single-event story. In 2023 she and co-skipper Cat Chimney won the Bermuda One-Two outright, the first all-female team to do so, winning both legs by more than 12 hours. In 2025 she joined Team Malizia as co-skipper on the IMOCA 60 alongside Boris Herrmann and Will Harris, racing The Ocean Race Europe and the Course des Caps. Her longer target is the 2028 Vendee Globe. What a business audience gets from her is the operational texture of decision-making when there is no one to escalate to. She is specific about the preparation, the trade-offs she rejected, the moments she got it wrong, and how she rebuilt composure in the next watch. The voyage was also a communications exercise: near-daily video from the boat built an audience of nearly 400,000 and changed who follows offshore racing. That combination of elite performance and direct, unvarnished narration is what makes her useful to leadership teams trying to understand what real endurance looks like from the inside. Key speaking topics Decision-making under irreversible consequences Resilience and endurance in extreme environments Risk management and preparation High-performance offshore teams Leading yourself when no one is watching Narrative, visibility, and building a following around hard work Ideal for Executive and senior leadership off-sites focused on judgement under pressure Sales kickoffs and company-wide events where the goal is genuine inspiration backed by a specific story Risk, operations, and safety leadership audiences who want practitioner-level detail rather than metaphor Audience outcomes A vivid, concrete benchmark for what sustained performance under pressure actually requires Specific language for talking about preparation and risk that leaders can carry back into their own decisions A different model of resilience, rooted in routine, self-honesty, and recovery rather than willpower A reset on what courage looks like at working level, not a motivational abstraction

Why organisations work with Rose Eskafi Combines an MSc in Mindfulness and Compassion with a BSc in Psychology, so the work is grounded in clinical evidence, not generic wellness language Brings trauma-informed practice into corporate settings, which most workplace wellbeing providers are not trained to do Has built and run wellbeing for a working organisation as Head of People and Wellbeing at gal-dem, so understands the operational reality of HR teams, not just the content Track record delivering for consumer brands including LUSH, Snapchat, and Nike, where workforce demographics, creative pressure, and identity questions all sit on the table at once Biography highlights Founder, Still Chill, a workplace wellbeing consultancy focused on mindfulness, compassion, and trauma-informed culture Former Head of People and Wellbeing, gal-dem MSc in Mindfulness and Compassion; BSc in Psychology Delivered programmes for LUSH, Snapchat, and Nike Teaches in line with the UK Network for Mindfulness-Based Teachers’ good practice guidelines Listed expert with Canvas8 Biography Most workplace wellbeing offers are pitched at the wrong layer. They sit between perk and content and rarely touch the conditions that produce burnout, disengagement, or attrition. Rose Eskafi’s work starts at that deeper layer, where stress regulation, identity, and culture meet. She is the founder of Still Chill, a consultancy that designs mindfulness, compassion, and trauma-informed programmes for corporate teams. Clients have included LUSH, Snapchat, and Nike. The approach pairs an MSc in Mindfulness and Compassion with a BSc in Psychology, so the practical tools are anchored in clinical evidence rather than wellness language. Before Still Chill, she was Head of People and Wellbeing at gal-dem, where she ran the people function for a working organisation rather than consulting from the outside. That operating background shapes the work. Programmes are designed to fit how HR and people teams actually deliver, not as set-piece talks that leave the room when the speaker does. She teaches in line with the UK Network for Mindfulness-Based Teachers’ good practice guidelines and is trained in self-compassion and racial trauma, which gives her a clearer line on the questions corporate wellbeing usually avoids: how identity, pressure, and belonging interact for the people sitting in the room. Key speaking topics Workplace mindfulness and stress regulation Self-compassion and emotional regulation Trauma-informed approaches to corporate wellbeing Authentic and mindful leadership Neuroinclusion and neurodiversity at work Imposter syndrome and the inner critic Culture, identity, and belonging in organisations Ideal for CHROs and Heads of People building or re-platforming a wellbeing programme that has lost credibility DEI and ERG leads where identity, belonging, and mental health intersect Founders and creative leadership teams in consumer, media, and design organisations Learning and development leads commissioning content for high-pressure or high-attrition functions Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of wellbeing that goes beyond perks and resilience training Practical mindfulness and self-compassion tools usable inside the working day A frame for how trauma-informed practice changes the way managers run conversations Language for talking about identity, belonging, and pressure without defaulting to compliance scripts A sharper view of where the organisation’s current wellbeing offer is doing real work and where it is not

Why organisations work with Ed Jordan He treats executive presence as a teachable craft, not a personality trait, drawing on 25 years in front of cameras and microphones to coach how leaders actually land in a room. He pairs that stagecraft with a Gordon Institute of Business Science coaching qualification and a decade inside Innovation, Wealth and High Net Worth Private Banking, so the language is recognisable to senior commercial audiences. He has been named Professional Speaker of the Year by the PSA UK and Ireland, an industry-judged award by working speakers, not a marketing claim. He works fluently across formats: keynote, executive coaching, on-camera training, moderation and event hosting, which makes him useful when a leadership event needs a single anchor, not a roster. His moderating roster includes Steve Wozniak, Biz Stone and Nicolas Sarkozy, evidence he can hold a room with figures more senior than the audience. Biography highlights Certified Business Coach, Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). PSA Professional Speaker of the Year, UK and Ireland. 25 years as a South African TV presenter (Deal or No Deal, Popstars, Fast Forward, The Wedding Show) and Kaya FM Breakfast Show host. Multi-platinum recording artist; performed an original composition at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service. Decade inside Financial Services since 2014, in Innovation, Wealth and High Net Worth Private Banking. Hosting and moderating credits with Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank and Investec, including platform conversations with Steve Wozniak, Biz Stone and Nicolas Sarkozy. Biography Presence is now part of the job description for senior leaders. Quarterly all-hands events, board updates, investor calls and internal video are not occasional performances. They are the medium through which leadership decisions are received, judged and remembered. Ed Jordan worked that medium for 25 years before he taught it. As a South African television presenter on Deal or No Deal, Popstars and Fast Forward, and as Kaya FM’s Breakfast Show host, he learned how to hold a room in real time, on camera, without a second take. He is also a multi-platinum recording artist who performed an original composition at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service. In 2014 he moved into Financial Services, spending a decade in Innovation, Wealth and High Net Worth Private Banking. That gave him fluency with the audience he now coaches. He qualified as a Business Coach through the Gordon Institute of Business Science and built a leadership practice that translates stagecraft into a discipline senior executives can practise. The work is most useful when leaders inherit a wider remit than the skills that earned them the role. Jordan was named Professional Speaker of the Year by the PSA in the UK and Ireland, and is regularly trusted to moderate platforms with figures including Steve Wozniak, Biz Stone and Nicolas Sarkozy, holding the room when the room is senior. Key speaking topics Executive presence and on-camera communication Self-leadership and personal effectiveness Leadership development for newly senior leaders Purpose and values alignment at work Virtual and hybrid communication craft Moderation and platform conversation Ideal for CEOs and executive teams preparing for high-stakes platform moments Senior leaders moving into broader, more visible roles Learning and leadership development heads designing executive programmes Internal communications and corporate affairs leaders rebuilding leader visibility Audience outcomes A working method for executive presence on stage, on camera and in the room Specific techniques for self-leadership under pressure that hold up in live settings A vocabulary for purpose and values that senior commercial audiences will engage with Concrete improvements in how leaders prepare for and recover from high-stakes communication moments

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

Why organisations work with Yuvaraj S Lingappa A clinician in the room, not a wellness commentator. Three decades of frontline medical practice sit behind every recommendation on stress, sleep and weight. Formal obesity-medicine credential from the World Obesity Federation (SCOPE Certified), which few corporate wellbeing speakers hold. Built and runs SlimIsEasy, a working consumer weight-management product, so the content is grounded in what actually shifts behaviour at scale, not workshop theory. Author of Easy Guide to Stress Relief, a short-form workplace stress book designed for time-poor corporate readers. Biography highlights Physician trained at Madras Medical College, Chennai. Over 30 years in clinical practice including paediatrics and family medicine at Victoria Hospital, St Lucia. SCOPE Certified by the World Obesity Federation, London. Author of Easy Guide to Stress Relief. Co-founder of the SlimIsEasy weight-management app. Speaker and corporate trainer on stress management, weight, and peak performance for executive and employee audiences. Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes treat stress and weight as soft topics. The clinical reality is different. Both are measurable drivers of attention, decision quality, absence and attrition, and both respond to specific interventions rather than general encouragement. That is the territory Yuvaraj S Lingappa works in. He trained as a physician at Madras Medical College and practised for more than three decades, including a long tenure as a paediatrician and family practitioner at Victoria Hospital in St Lucia. The clinical grounding shapes the way he talks to corporate audiences: he treats stress as a physiological condition and obesity as a medical one, not as a motivational problem to be willed away. The obesity work carries a formal credential. He is SCOPE Certified by the World Obesity Federation in London, the international body’s professional standard for obesity care. Alongside the speaking and coaching practice, he co-founded SlimIsEasy, a consumer weight-management app, which gives him a live view of what behaviour change looks like outside the seminar room. His book Easy Guide to Stress Relief is written for corporate readers who will not finish a longer text. The same instinct runs through the speaking work: short, clinically grounded sessions that give an executive audience something to act on before the end of the week. Key speaking topics Workplace stress management Clinical approaches to weight and metabolic health Sleep, energy and executive performance Behaviour change at scale Health as a workforce productivity lever Peak performance for high-pressure roles Ideal for CHROs and heads of employee wellbeing reviewing the clinical substance of their wellness offer. Executive and leadership audiences where stress, sleep and weight are degrading performance. HR and benefits leaders in healthcare, professional services, financial services and high-pressure operating environments. Internal health and wellbeing weeks and leadership offsites that need a medically credentialed voice. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how stress and weight actually affect workforce performance, from a clinician’s standpoint. Specific, low-friction techniques for managing stress that work inside a normal corporate day. A grounded view of what serious weight and metabolic intervention looks like, and what most workplace programmes miss. Practical steps individuals can take in the week after the session, rather than aspirational targets.

Why organisations work with Kwame Onwuachi He has built an inclusive kitchen at the top of fine dining, an industry structurally hostile to it, and can speak to the practical mechanics of who gets hired, who gets mentored, and who stays. His entrepreneurial track record is concrete: multiple restaurant openings, public failure with Shaw Bijou, and the rebuild that produced Tatiana, named #1 in New York by The New York Times two years running. The Family Reunion, his annual hospitality industry summit with Salamander and Sheila Johnson, gives him standing as a convenor of the diversity conversation in food, not just a participant in it. Two best-selling books with Penguin Random House, a James Beard Rising Star Chef award, and a Food & Wine executive producer role mean his narrative is documented and credible to a corporate audience. Biography highlights James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef of the Year, 2019. Chef and owner of Tatiana at Lincoln Center, named #1 Restaurant in New York by The New York Times in 2023 and 2024, and “One to Watch” by World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Author of “Notes from a Young Black Chef” (2019) and “My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef” (2022) with Penguin Random House. Founder of The Family Reunion, an annual hospitality diversity event in partnership with Salamander Hotels & Resorts. Contributing executive producer at Food & Wine; named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs. Trained at The Culinary Institute of America, Per Se, and Eleven Madison Park; Top Chef finalist. Biography The fine-dining industry has spent decades discussing diversity without changing very much about who runs its kitchens. Onwuachi is one of the few chefs operating at the top of that industry who can describe, from the inside, why that gap exists and what it takes to close it. Tatiana, his Lincoln Center restaurant, has been named the number one restaurant in New York by The New York Times for two consecutive years. His route there was not linear. He sold candy on subway platforms in the Bronx to fund a catering business, cooked on a boat serving the Deepwater Horizon clean-up crews, trained at the Culinary Institute of America, and worked the line at Per Se and Eleven Madison Park. His first solo restaurant, Shaw Bijou in Washington DC, closed within months. The James Beard Foundation named him Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2019, the year his memoir “Notes from a Young Black Chef” was published. The substance of his corporate work sits in what he built next. The Family Reunion, his annual industry event with Salamander Hotels & Resorts, brings together chefs and hospitality leaders to address representation in food. His cookbook “My America” reframes the question of what American cuisine actually is by tracing the Caribbean, African, and southern Black culinary lineages that produced it. As a Food & Wine contributing executive producer, he sits inside the editorial conversation rather than outside it. For a corporate audience, the value is specific. He has hired, trained, and retained an unusually diverse senior team in an industry where attrition for those workers is severe. He talks about the operational decisions that produced that outcome, not the ideology behind it. Key speaking topics Inclusion and culture in fine dining and hospitality Entrepreneurship through failure and recovery The food of the African Diaspora as American cuisine Storytelling, identity, and brand Building creative teams in exclusionary industries Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads facing pressure to move beyond programmatic inclusion Hospitality, food, and consumer brand leadership teams Founder and entrepreneur audiences working through scale and reinvention Off-sites and conferences seeking a credible voice on culture without corporate framing Audience outcomes A concrete account of what inclusive hiring and retention look like inside a high-pressure operating environment A founder’s view of public failure and the discipline required to rebuild A more honest reading of what American food culture actually is and who built it Renewed appetite for cultural specificity as a commercial asset, not a compliance category

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

Why organisations work with Nikhil Desai A signature programme on stress management, “Achieving Excellence Thru Stress Management”, that has been delivered to executives across more than 2,000 organisations and refined over three decades. A trainer’s instinct for behaviour change at scale, built through 250,000-plus participants across 42 countries, not a single keynote act. Direct operating credibility from building eight businesses in eight years across Indian textile and automobile manufacturing after his US MBA. A practical blend of corporate yoga practice and MBA discipline that lands well with mixed audiences in Asia, the Gulf, and beyond. Biography highlights Director of The Centre For Excellence, the corporate training firm he founded in 1991 in the year of India’s economic liberalisation. MBA from a US university where he graduated first in his class, followed by a period working in New York. Built and ran manufacturing operations across the Indian textile and automobile sectors before moving full time into training. Programmes delivered to more than 250,000 participants across 300-plus cities in 42 countries. Recipient of the Global Iconic Motivational Speaker Award (Leadership & Excellence Awards 2021) and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World HRD Congress. Author of the forthcoming book “9 Habits Of Super Successful People”. Biography The Centre For Excellence opened its doors in 1991, the year India dismantled its old industrial controls and a generation of managers had to learn a new commercial language. Nikhil Desai had already lived both sides of that shift. He had taken an MBA in the United States, graduating first in his class, then worked in New York before returning to India to build manufacturing businesses across textiles and automobile components. That operating background matters because it shapes what he teaches. He grew one business into eight in eight years, which gave him a working view of how middle managers actually behave under cost pressure, missed deadlines, and family obligation pulling in opposite directions. His signature programmes, “In Pursuit Of Excellence” and “Achieving Excellence Thru Stress Management”, are designed around that lived friction rather than a textbook model of motivation. The reach is large by any standard for the corporate training market. More than 250,000 participants across 300 cities in 42 countries have been through his programmes over three decades. He works in English and Gujarati, runs sessions from Mumbai to Muscat, and is one of a small number of Indian trainers regularly booked into multinational programmes in the Gulf, South Africa, and South East Asia. What he is not is a strategy speaker. The work sits in personal effectiveness, stress resilience, communication, and team behaviour, which is its own discipline and one most senior leaders quietly know their organisations are weakest at. The Lifetime Achievement Award from the World HRD Congress reflects that. His forthcoming book, “9 Habits Of Super Successful People”, continues the same line. Key speaking topics Stress management and personal resilience Personal effectiveness and time management Motivation and excellence in the workplace Leadership and team performance Communication and presentation skills Customer care and sales behaviour Train the trainer programmes Ideal for HR and L&D leaders commissioning company-wide capability programmes Sales and customer-facing teams under sustained delivery pressure Middle managers stepping up into leadership roles for the first time Indian and Gulf-based organisations with mixed-language workforces Audience outcomes Practical techniques for managing stress without disengaging from the work Sharper personal time management habits that survive the week after the session A clearer view of what excellence looks like in their specific role Communication and presentation skills that hold up in front of internal and external audiences Greater confidence in handling difficult customers, colleagues, and team dynamics