Resilience & Stress Management

Why organisations work with Keira Walsh She has held the central midfield role in two winning European finals for England, including as Player of the Match at Wembley in 2022, which is a specific position about reading risk and keeping a team in shape under pressure. Her career carries the weight of a world-record transfer fee, which is a useful frame for any leader being asked to perform after a step-change in expectation, scrutiny or investment. She offers an inside account of an elite team culture, the Lionesses under Sarina Wiegman, that has now won back-to-back European Championships and reached a World Cup final. Her move from Barcelona to Chelsea in January 2025 is a recent, deliberate case study in choosing environment and ambition over comfort, told first-hand. Biography highlights MBE in the 2026 New Year Honours for services to association football. UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 final Player of the Match; UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 winner with England. World-record transfer fee in women’s football when Barcelona signed her from Manchester City in September 2022. Two UEFA Women’s Champions League titles with FC Barcelona. Chelsea midfielder since January 2025 on a four-and-a-half-year deal. Over 100 senior England caps; ever-present in Sarina Wiegman’s midfield through two winning European Championship campaigns. Biography Holding midfield in a winning international final is, in football terms, the most exposed leadership job on the pitch. It is the role that connects defence to attack, absorbs pressure when the opposition raises tempo, and decides which risks the team can afford in the last twenty minutes. Walsh has now done that job twice, at Euro 2022 and Euro 2025, in the two most scrutinised matches in the women’s game. The 2022 final at Wembley was the case study. England were level with Germany when Walsh produced the assist for Ella Toone’s opening goal and was named Player of the Match. UEFA’s technical observers noted that she “balanced the team throughout the game” and rarely lost possession. Three years later she was back in the starting line-up for the Euro 2025 final in Basel, helping England retain the title in a penalty shoot-out against Spain. Her club career has carried a comparable weight of expectation. Barcelona paid a reported 400,000 pounds for her in September 2022, a world record in women’s football, and she went on to win two UEFA Women’s Champions League titles and a domestic continental quadruple. In January 2025 she returned to England with Chelsea on a four-and-a-half-year contract, signed explicitly to help the club convert domestic dominance into European success. For corporate audiences, the substance is composure under exposure. Walsh is a working professional who has been the named senior player in a unit twice asked to win a continental final, and a transfer asset twice priced at the top of her market. The MBE awarded in the 2026 New Year Honours marks the public record. The more useful material is the operating detail behind it. Key speaking topics Composure and decision-making under pressure Elite team culture and cohesion Resilience after setback and injury Performing after a step-change in expectation Women’s sport and the commercial reset of the game Leadership in the holding role Ideal for Leadership teams preparing for a high-scrutiny year: post-IPO, post-acquisition, new mandate CHROs and culture leads building cohesion in senior teams under sustained pressure Conference audiences in sport, media and consumer brands engaging with the growth of women’s football Employee and partner events where the brief is human performance rather than technical content Audience outcomes A first-hand picture of how a winning international squad makes decisions in the final twenty minutes of a closely fought match. A working definition of composure that is usable by senior leaders, not motivational language. A concrete example of what changes when an individual is priced and expected to operate at the very top of their market. An honest account of leaving a winning environment for a harder one, and the reasoning behind it.

Why organisations work with Demi Stokes A first-hand voice from the England squad that won UEFA Women’s Euro 2022, the most commercially significant moment in English women’s football. Nine seasons at the top of the Women’s Super League with Manchester City, including a WSL title, three FA Cups and three League Cups, plus a return to first-team football after the premature birth of her son. A current player and Newcastle United captain, which gives event audiences access to a live insider perspective rather than a retrospective career story. A credible advocate on premature birth and neonatal care through her Pampers UK ambassadorship with Bliss and UNICEF, suited to wellbeing, parental-leave and ERG-focused events. Biography highlights Member of the England squad that won UEFA Women’s Euro 2022; 69 senior caps between 2014 and 2023. Won the FA Women’s Super League, three FA Women’s Cups and three League Cups with Manchester City between 2015 and 2024. Named in the PFA WSL Team of the Year in 2018 and 2019. Captained Team GB to gold at the 2013 Summer Universiade in Kazan and represented Team GB at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Signed for Newcastle United Women in July 2024 and named club captain ahead of the 2025/26 season. Pampers UK ambassador for the #PampersforPreemies campaign with Bliss and UNICEF. Biography Most elite athletes peak inside a single environment. Demi Stokes built her career across four of them. Sunderland gave her a first-team debut at sixteen and an FA Cup final in 2009. A scholarship to the University of South Florida added four years of US college football. A summer at Vancouver Whitecaps in the USL W League followed before Manchester City signed her in January 2015. What she built at City is the substance of the speaking story. Nine seasons, more than 100 first-team appearances, the 2016 FA WSL title, three FA Women’s Cups and three League Cups. Two PFA WSL Team of the Year selections, in 2018 and 2019. A senior England debut in 2014, and a place in the squad that won UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 at Wembley, the most commercially important moment in English women’s football. The personal layer runs alongside the career. Stokes was born ten weeks premature herself, and her son Harlen spent time in a neonatal unit after a difficult pregnancy that included pre-eclampsia. She has spoken openly about that period in interviews with Grazia and Mother & Baby, and works with Pampers UK on the #PampersforPreemies campaign in partnership with Bliss and UNICEF. The throughline that audiences hear is how a senior international footballer sustains performance through events that most workplaces still struggle to talk about. She left Manchester City in May 2024, signed for Newcastle United Women in July, and was named club captain ahead of the 2025/26 season. The story she brings to a room is current, not archived. Key speaking topics Lionesses and UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 Women’s football and the professionalisation of the game Return to elite performance after a difficult pregnancy Premature birth, neonatal care and family advocacy Leadership in a dressing room and team identity Long-career resilience across clubs, countries and codes Ideal for Internal events tied to International Women’s Day, parental-leave policy launches or working-parent ERGs. Wellbeing, EDI and culture programmes looking for a credible voice on resilience and identity rather than a clinical specialist. Sport-sponsorship activations, hospitality nights and awards dinners where a current Lioness presence is the brief. Audience outcomes An inside account of the England squad that won UEFA Women’s Euro 2022, told by a senior squad member. A direct view of how a top-flight athlete returns to performance after a high-risk pregnancy and a premature birth. A useable reference point for managers thinking about how to support employees through major personal events. A current-player perspective on dressing-room leadership and the demands of being a club captain.

Why organisations work with Ade Oladipo He brings live broadcast craft to corporate events: DAZN Boxing, talkSPORT and Amazon Prime Premier League coverage are all built on holding a live audience under pressure, which is exactly what large internal conferences and award nights demand. His career is a documented case of breaking a colour barrier in UK sports media, becoming the first Black presenter of a live Premier League match in December 2023. That is concrete material, not abstract DEI commentary. His speaking themes (adversity, mental health, working in media) are grounded in his own route through fostering, East London, sports trials and a non-traditional path into journalism, which gives the content specificity rather than slogans. He is equally credible as keynote speaker, panel moderator and awards host, which makes him useful for clients who need one booking to cover the whole evening. Biography highlights Lead presenter for DAZN Boxing and host of “The DAZN Boxing Show”, covering Anthony Joshua, Canelo Alvarez, Gervonta Davis and KSI fights. First Black presenter of a live Premier League match in the UK, anchoring Amazon Prime’s coverage of Crystal Palace v Bournemouth in December 2023. Presenter across the talkSPORT network, including “The Social” on talkSPORT 2 and pundit work on “Kick Off Added Time”. Winner of the 2021 Audio Production Awards “Best New Voice”. Co-host of the 2023 ARIAS-nominated podcast “The Men’s Room”. Prior credits include Sky Sports News (Premier League and EFL transfer reporting), ESPN, Fox Sports and Arise News. Biography Live boxing on DAZN, Premier League football on Amazon Prime, weekly radio on talkSPORT. Three different audiences, three different production cultures, one presenter holding the room when the broadcast is live and the script has gone. That is the working life Ade Oladipo has built, and it is the material he brings into the corporate room. In December 2023 he became the first Black presenter of a live Premier League match in the UK, leading Amazon Prime’s coverage of Crystal Palace against Bournemouth. The story behind that night runs through Brighton foster care, East London, Essex football and athletics, a Tottenham Hotspur Academy trial, and an entry into sports journalism in 2015 at Arise News. None of it was the standard route. His speaking work draws on that route directly. The themes are adversity, mental health, and what it takes to keep doing the work when you are the only person in the room who looks like you. Awards include the 2021 Audio Production Awards “Best New Voice” and a 2023 ARIAS nomination as co-host of “The Men’s Room” podcast, evidence that the craft holds up alongside the story. For corporate clients his most direct value is hosting craft: keynote, Q&A, awards, panel moderation, all delivered with the calm of someone who presents live boxing for a living. The keynote on adversity and mental health is the additional offer when the brief calls for it. Key speaking topics Mental health and resilience in high-pressure work Adversity and non-linear career paths Race and representation in UK media Sports broadcasting and live presenting Event hosting and panel moderation Awards night MC Ideal for Corporate event organisers needing a host who can carry a full evening: keynote, panel, awards. Internal CHRO and DEI leads commissioning content on lived experience rather than policy. Sports, media and entertainment industry conferences. Employee Resource Group events, particularly those focused on Black professionals in white-majority industries. Audience outcomes A clear sense of what sustained mental health practice looks like for someone working under public scrutiny. A specific story of breaking into and breaking through a closed industry, used as material for their own career conversations. A sharper view of what genuine inclusion feels like from inside, beyond the slide deck. An event held together by a presenter trained on live broadcast, not a corporate stage.

Why organisations work with Jodie Taylor Taylor won the Golden Boot at 31, after a serious knee injury had disrupted her career in her mid-20s. The story is sustained performance through real adversity – not a single peak moment – which is what makes the resilience argument land with competitive organisations. A career spanning 17 clubs across six countries – from NWSL franchises to Lyon’s UEFA Champions League-winning squad – means direct exposure to how elite performance cultures actually differ. She brings comparative insight into what drives delivery under pressure, not a single exportable model. She is now Arsenal Women’s Technical Director – the first person to hold the role at the club – which means her thinking about the conditions for elite performance is being tested in a live organisational context, not drawn solely from memory of a playing career that ended years ago. As the first Englishwoman to score a hat-trick in a major international tournament, she carries a specific, named, verifiable performance record. That kind of credential anchors credibility differently than a career overview. A UEFA A coaching licence and an in-progress Masters in Sports Directorship mean her framework for translating athletic performance into organisational learning has structured analytical rigour behind it – a distinction that matters in leadership conversations where storytelling alone doesn’t carry the room. Biography highlights UEFA Women’s EURO 2017 Golden Boot winner – five goals in four appearances, including the first hat-trick by an Englishwoman in a major international tournament 51 England senior caps and 19 international goals; represented England at the 2015 and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cups (England won bronze in 2015) UEFA Women’s Champions League winner with Lyon (2019-20); FA Cup winner with Birmingham City (2012) Vauxhall England Player of the Year 2017; Oregon State University Athletics Hall of Fame inductee (2020) Career spanning 17 clubs across six countries – England, USA, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and France Appointed Arsenal Women’s Technical Director (January 2026) – the first person to hold the role at the club Biography At UEFA Women’s EURO 2017, Jodie Taylor scored five goals in four appearances, took the Golden Boot, and became the first Englishwoman to score a hat-trick in a major international tournament. She was 31, and had already spent more than a decade moving between clubs across six countries. That breadth matters. Seventeen clubs in England, the United States, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and France is direct exposure to how elite performance cultures are built, maintained, and dismantled in genuinely different environments. Alongside the Golden Boot, Taylor won the FA Cup with Birmingham City and the UEFA Women’s Champions League with Lyon, earned 51 England caps, and was named Vauxhall England Player of the Year. She did all of it while navigating a serious knee injury and the structural uncertainties of a women’s game that was still building its professional infrastructure. What is less common is the transition she has made since retiring from professional football in 2023. Appointed Arsenal Women’s Technical Director in January 2026 – the first person to hold that role at the club – Taylor now works directly on the organisational conditions that enable elite performance: the structures, cultures, and systems that translate individual talent into consistent team output. She holds a UEFA A coaching licence and is completing a Masters in Sports Directorship. The result is a perspective that sits at the intersection of frontline competitive experience and structured organisational thinking. Taylor has seen high-performance culture from the inside of 17 different teams and is now building it from the outside. That combination is rare, and it is precisely what makes her valuable in leadership conversations about performance, resilience, and what teams actually need to deliver when the stakes are highest. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure High-performance team culture Resilience and sustained performance Leadership in competitive environments Building and maintaining team trust Mindset and focus in high-stakes situations Navigating setbacks and career adversity Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite audiences focused on performance culture and competitive resilience CHROs and People leaders building or transforming high-performance team environments Women’s leadership networks and inclusion programmes Sales, commercial, and performance-driven teams in competitive industries Audience outcomes A concrete, evidence-based account of what the conditions for sustained high performance actually look like – drawn from elite competition across multiple cultures and environments Clearer thinking about the gap between individual talent and collective team delivery, and what leaders can do to close it before pressure arrives Practical reflection on how trust, culture, and individual mindset interact in high-stakes moments A sharper vocabulary for leadership conversations about resilience, performance, and team culture Perspective from a practitioner who has both competed at the highest level and is now building organisational performance structures inside a major professional club

Why organisations work with Alvin Law A resilience keynote built on six decades of lived practice, not a framework borrowed from research. Born without arms, he has worked, broadcast, performed music, and raised a family by inventing methods most people assume cannot exist. Hall of Fame platform craft. Inducted into the Canadian Speakers Hall of Fame (CAPS) in 2009 and one of the under-ten-percent of professional speakers globally to hold the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation. A trained broadcaster’s command of room, pacing, and message. The keynote is built for large internal audiences, sales kick-offs, and association main stages where a speaker has to reset attention, not just hold it. Subject of three internationally distributed documentaries by John Zaritsky and an Emmy-winning ABC FrontRunners segment, which gives the booking a level of cultural recognition that travels beyond the room. Inducted into the Canadian Disability Hall of Fame in 2018 and recipient of the Peter Legge Philanthropic Award in 2022, signalling a track record of substantive contribution rather than platform alone. Biography highlights Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and inductee, Canadian Speakers Hall of Fame (CAPS), 2009. Inductee, Canadian Disability Hall of Fame, 2018. Author, Alvin’s Laws of Life: 5 Steps To Successfully Overcome Anything. Subject of three John Zaritsky documentaries: Broken Promises (1989), Extraordinary People (1993), and No Limits: The Thalidomide Saga (2016). Vanier Award for Outstanding Young Canadians (1982); Queen Elizabeth Golden Jubilee Medal (2002); Peter Legge Philanthropic Award (2022). Trained broadcaster, Mount Royal College (graduated with honours, 1980), with a professional radio career at CFMQ FM Regina before founding AJL Communications Ltd. in 1988. Biography Resilience is the variable that quietly decides how organisations come through repeated change. When it thins, every other leadership tool gets harder to use. The keynote that restores it cannot be theoretical; it has to be earned in front of the audience. That is the room Alvin Law has been built for. Born in Yorkton, Saskatchewan in 1960 without arms, the result of his birth mother’s exposure to thalidomide, Law was placed for adoption at five days old and raised by Hilda and Jack Law. He learned to use his feet for tasks most people associate with hands, including playing trombone and drumming, and trained as a broadcaster at Mount Royal College, graduating with honours in 1980. A radio career at CFMQ FM in Regina followed, then full-time speaking from 1988 through AJL Communications Ltd. The credentials are unusually concrete for the resilience category. Law holds the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, sits in the Canadian Speakers Hall of Fame (CAPS, 2009) and the Canadian Disability Hall of Fame (2018), and was named a Vanier Outstanding Young Canadian in 1982. He is the author of Alvin’s Laws of Life: 5 Steps To Successfully Overcome Anything and the subject of three John Zaritsky documentaries, including the Emmy-recognised FrontRunners segment on ABC. What buyers actually book is platform craft applied to a workforce problem. Law uses broadcasting discipline, drumming, and direct storytelling to move a room from spectator to participant inside an hour, which is why association main stages, sales kick-offs, and large internal town halls return to him. Key speaking topics Resilience and adversity Mindset and personal agency Motivation and inspiration Storytelling and stagecraft Workforce engagement after change Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace Disability advocacy and inclusion Ideal for Sales kick-offs, association annual conferences, and large internal town halls reopening after restructuring or repeated change. CHROs and culture leads commissioning a credible, non-clinical voice on resilience for a whole-workforce moment. Healthcare, education, and not-for-profit audiences where lived experience carries more weight than corporate framing. Internal communications and event leads briefing a main-stage opener or closer that needs to reset attention across a wide demographic. Audience outcomes A reset on what the room treats as a real obstacle versus a story about one. Specific, repeatable mental habits for keeping composure when conditions stay difficult. A renewed sense of personal agency, including in roles where people feel acted upon by change. A shared experience that managers can refer back to in team conversations months later.

Why organisations work with Alison Canavan She turns wellbeing from a benefits line item into something employees do during the working day. Her signature 5-Minute Journal practice and short mindfulness routines are designed for people who say they have no time for wellbeing. She brings a UCLA Semel Institute mindfulness credential into rooms that would otherwise be sceptical of meditation language, which gives HR and people leaders a defensible programme to stand behind. She built a structured wellbeing series for an airline, Aer Lingus, on a workforce known for shift fatigue and circadian disruption. That kind of operational application travels well into other shift-heavy and high-pressure environments. She speaks from a lived recovery narrative, postnatal depression, addiction, single parenthood, without turning the talk into therapy. Audiences disclose more honestly afterwards, which is what HR teams say they need. She is comfortable with both a 200-person town hall and an executive offsite, which matters for organisations rolling a single wellbeing voice across multiple formats. Biography highlights UCLA-trained Mindfulness Facilitator, Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior Author of Minding Mum: It’s Time to Take Care of You, published by Gill Books, Ireland Master NLP Practitioner, HeartMath facilitator, and graduate of the Irish Institute of Nutrition and Health (Advanced Diploma in Diet and Nutrition Therapeutics) Creator of the Wellbeing in the Skies series for Aer Lingus Corporate keynote and workshop work cited with Google, YouTube, Deloitte, Coinbase, Allianz, Bank of Ireland, PayPal, Bristol Myers Squibb, Deutsche Telekom and Vitality Regular contributor to Irish broadsheet and broadcast media on mental health and wellbeing, including The Sunday Independent and Ireland AM Biography Most wellbeing programmes inside organisations underperform for the same reason. They treat stress and mental health as a benefits category rather than something that happens minute by minute during the working day. Alison Canavan’s corporate work is built around closing that gap. She trained as a Mindfulness Facilitator at UCLA’s Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and combines that with practitioner-level work in NLP, HeartMath and nutrition. The point of stacking those disciplines is practical. Different parts of a workforce respond to different entry points, and her programmes are designed to give people a route in that does not require them to call it meditation if they do not want to. Her book Minding Mum, published by Gill Books in Ireland, established her early authority on postnatal mental health and self-care. The corporate work has since broadened into stress, burnout, anxiety, hybrid working pressure, and the slow erosion of attention that senior teams now describe as their biggest people problem. Her Wellbeing in the Skies series, built for Aer Lingus cabin crew, is one example of a structured programme designed for a workforce that cannot easily step away from the job to look after itself. What audiences tend to take from her sessions is not a concept but a habit. The 5-Minute Journal practice she teaches is the most cited example. It is short enough to survive a real working week, which is the only test that matters for workplace wellbeing content. Key speaking topics Workplace mental health and burnout Mindfulness and daily practice for high-pressure teams Stress, anxiety and recovery Hybrid working and return-to-office wellbeing Self-leadership and emotional regulation Resilience and sustainable performance Postnatal mental health and parental wellbeing Ideal for CHROs and heads of people designing the next iteration of their wellbeing strategy Wellbeing, DEI and employee experience leads commissioning company-wide programmes Operational leaders of shift-based or high-pressure workforces (airlines, healthcare, financial services, contact centres) Leadership offsites and senior team meetings where stress and personal capacity have become a strategic conversation Audience outcomes A daily practice, anchored in the 5-Minute Journal method, that survives a real working week A clearer language for stress, burnout and anxiety that employees and managers can actually use with each other Specific techniques for nervous system regulation that work in the gaps between meetings A more honest conversation about mental health inside the room, which most HR teams report as the single hardest thing to engineer

Why organisations work with Jamie Kern Lima A founder track record at a scale almost no speaker in the entrepreneurship category can match: a category-creating consumer brand sold to L’Oreal for $1.2 billion, after Sephora said no for six years and QVC said no for three. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s history, with direct operating experience inside a $30 billion strategic acquirer post-acquisition, not just pre-exit. Two New York Times bestselling books, “Believe IT” and “Worthy”, giving sales teams and leadership audiences a tested framework on rejection and self-worth that the speaker has already road-tested with millions of readers. Host of the Gracie Award-winning Jamie Kern Lima Show, with first-time podcast interviews from figures including Meghan Markle and Michelle Obama, which gives the platform reach and the speaker a sharpened interviewer’s instinct for what actually moves an audience. A Columbia MBA and Columbia Business School board member who chooses to lead with the founder story, not the credential stack. The buyer gets the substance underneath the inspiration. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of IT Cosmetics; sold to L’Oreal in 2016 for $1.2 billion. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s 100+ year history. Two-time New York Times bestselling author: “Believe IT” (Simon & Schuster, 2021) and “Worthy” (Hay House, 2024). Host of “The Jamie Kern Lima Show”, winner of the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast, Lifestyle. Guest Shark, ABC’s Shark Tank, Season 16. MBA, Columbia Business School; member of the Columbia Business School Board of Overseers. Listed on Forbes’ America’s Richest Self-Made Women. Biography IT Cosmetics was turned down by Sephora for six years and by QVC for three before Jamie Kern Lima got either retailer on the phone. By 2016 the company was the largest luxury makeup brand in America, and L’Oreal paid $1.2 billion to acquire it. She became the first female CEO of a brand in the group’s history. The founding story is unusual because the product positioning was unusual. IT Cosmetics was built around real skin: rosacea, hyperpigmentation, post-chemotherapy skin, customers QVC’s buyers were not used to seeing on camera. Kern Lima insisted on putting them there. That decision, more than any single marketing tactic, is what separated the brand from the prestige beauty pack and made it acquirable at scale. Post-exit, she has built a second platform with similar discipline. “Believe IT” and “Worthy” are both New York Times bestsellers; “The Jamie Kern Lima Show” won the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast in the lifestyle category, on the back of first-ever podcast interviews with Meghan Markle and a multi-part series with Oprah Winfrey. She is on the board of overseers at Columbia Business School, where she earned her MBA in 2004. For a corporate audience, the relevant content is concrete. How a category-creating consumer brand survives years of rejection from the gatekeepers it depends on. How founder-led marketing competes with conglomerate marketing budgets. What changes inside the business the day a $30 billion strategic acquirer owns it. What stays the same. Key speaking topics Founder-led brand building and category creation Selling to and operating inside a strategic acquirer Authenticity as a marketing operating principle Rejection as a sales and growth discipline Direct retail, on-camera selling and QVC scale-up Resilience and self-worth for senior leaders Women’s entrepreneurship at scale Ideal for Sales kick-offs, especially in consumer, retail, beauty, and direct-to-consumer categories CMOs and brand teams reframing what “authentic” marketing means in practice Founder and scale-up audiences inside corporate venture, accelerator, and women’s leadership programmes Annual conferences seeking a headline keynote with mainstream cultural reach Audience outcomes A working playbook on building demand for a consumer brand the trade buyers have already rejected A clearer framework for how founder-led companies should think about brand voice after acquisition Specific tactics on handling rejection as a recurring operational event, not a one-off setback A renewed willingness, particularly among senior women, to put their own conviction back at the centre of commercial decisions

Why organisations work with Aidan McCullen A working library of change thinking. The Innovation Show has put him in long-form conversation with hundreds of named authors and practitioners on transformation, which feeds directly into the frameworks he brings into a room. A book with institutional weight. Undisruptable is a Wiley title with a foreword by Visa founder Dee Hock, and sits on a defined three-part argument about reinvention rather than a generic change pitch. Credentialled by Thinkers50. The 2025 Innovation Award places him among a small group of named voices that the management research community treats as serious on this topic. A practitioner seat at Trinity. He built and teaches the Emerging Technology Trends module at Trinity Business School, which forces his material to hold up under repeated MBA-level scrutiny. Reinvention as lived experience. A decade as an Ireland international rugby player, then digital lead at Bauer Media, then Head of Innovation at RTE, then author and board director, gives him standing to talk about personal reinvention without it sounding theoretical. Biography highlights Author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life, Wiley, with a foreword by Dee Hock, founder of Visa. Recipient of the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2025. Host and creator of The Innovation Show, broadcast on RTE Ireland and Finland’s Business FM. Adjunct Professor at Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, where he developed the Emerging Technology Trends module. Non-Executive Director at National Broadband Ireland. Former Ireland rugby international with more than 100 senior appearances for Leinster, Toulouse and London Irish. Biography Reinvention is the part of change leadership that organisations consistently underprice. Strategy decks are easy. Sustaining the personal and cultural shift after the deck is signed off is where most transformation programmes quietly break, which is the territory Aidan McCullen has spent the last decade mapping. His book Undisruptable, published by Wiley with a foreword by Visa founder Dee Hock, sets out a three-part argument: change as opportunity, the cognitive biases that block it, and the language leaders need to carry an organisation through it. The book sits alongside The Innovation Show, his interview platform, where he has worked through the material in long-form conversation with several hundred named authors, founders and academics on change and innovation. That output earned him the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2025 and an adjunct seat at Trinity Business School, where he built the Emerging Technology Trends module. He also serves as a Non-Executive Director at National Broadband Ireland, which keeps the work close to live infrastructure decisions rather than pure commentary. His own track record is the unusual part of the case. A decade as an Ireland rugby international with Leinster, Toulouse and London Irish, followed by digital ecosystem work at Bauer Media, the Head of Innovation role at RTE, and now author, broadcaster and board director, gives him direct experience of the cost of reinvention, which is what senior audiences tend to want to interrogate when the topic is on the agenda. Key speaking topics Permanent reinvention as a leadership discipline Change management and transformation programmes Cognitive bias and decision-making under change Emerging technology trends for senior leaders Innovation culture and operating models Personal reinvention and career transitions Communicating change inside large organisations Ideal for CEOs, COOs and transformation leads running multi-year change programmes CHROs and senior HR leaders responsible for leadership development and culture Boards and executive committees stress-testing the organisation’s capacity to keep changing Innovation, strategy and digital leaders who own the operating-model side of reinvention Audience outcomes A working model for treating reinvention as a continuous capability, not a one-off programme Specific named cases (including Fujifilm) of organisations that survived structural disruption, and what they did differently A clearer view of the cognitive biases that stall senior teams during change Language and analogies leaders can use to carry their own organisations through reinvention A short reading list of the most useful change thinkers, drawn from his interview catalogue

Why organisations work with Patrick Leddin A co-authored New York Times bestseller with James Patterson, Disrupt Everything and Win, that has been licensed by FranklinCovey as a global corporate training programme. Few keynote speakers have their material adopted as a productised curriculum at that scale. A working research base at Vanderbilt Owen, where he runs the Disruption Project. The frameworks in the keynote (the 5 roles of disruption, the 16 behaviours of successful disruptors) are grounded in field research, not consulting anecdotes. A career that has actually run leadership at every scale he speaks about: a ranger-qualified Army infantry officer, KPMG consultant, FranklinCovey practitioner, and co-founder of an Inc. 5000 firm. Senior audiences recognise the difference. A direct line into the Stephen M.R. Covey and FranklinCovey leadership canon, which is the operating language for L&D functions inside many large enterprises. Biography highlights Associate Professor of the Practice of Business Studies, Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management. Teaches Corporate Strategy, Negotiation, Advanced Marketing, and Crisis Leadership. Co-author with James Patterson of Disrupt Everything and Win: Take Control of Your Future (Little, Brown, 2025), an instant New York Times bestseller. Author of The Five-Week Leadership Challenge, a Wall Street Journal bestseller introduced by Stephen M.R. Covey. Subject-matter source for FranklinCovey’s Disrupt Everything: Innovate for Impact corporate training programme, launched October 2025. Host of the Leadership Lab podcast, with on-record interviews including Stephen M.R. Covey, Patrick Lencioni, Liz Wiseman, Chris Voss, and Marshall Goldsmith. Former U.S. Army airborne infantry ranger-qualified officer, former KPMG Consulting and FranklinCovey practitioner, co-founder of Wedgewood Consulting Group and Leddin Group. Biography Disruption used to be the event a leadership team planned for. It is now the operating condition. The question that follows is harder than the one most leadership development is built to answer: what does a leader actually do, day to day, when the disruption never stops arriving? That question is the subject of Disrupt Everything and Win, the New York Times bestseller Patrick Leddin co-authored with James Patterson. The book grew out of the Disruption Project at Vanderbilt Owen, where Leddin teaches Corporate Strategy and Crisis Leadership. The research produced specific output: five roles people play inside a disruption, sixteen behaviours that distinguish successful disruptors, eight tools leaders can use to convert disruption into progress. FranklinCovey has since licensed the material as a global training programme, Disrupt Everything: Innovate for Impact. The credibility behind that work is operational. Leddin served as a ranger-qualified U.S. Army infantry officer with the 82nd Airborne, ran large client engagements at KPMG Consulting and FranklinCovey, and co-founded Wedgewood Consulting Group, an Inc. 5000 firm that was acquired in 2012. His earlier book, The Five-Week Leadership Challenge, was introduced by Stephen M.R. Covey and reached the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. He hosts the Leadership Lab podcast, where his guests have included Patrick Lencioni, Liz Wiseman, Chris Voss, and Marshall Goldsmith. The argument senior teams come for is concrete. Disruption is not a communication problem to be managed by the executive office. It is a leadership capability that can be specified, taught, and practised at every level of the organisation, and a board that treats it that way will outperform one that does not. Key speaking topics Leadership in disruption Crisis leadership Organisational change and culture Leadership pipeline development Negotiation and influence Corporate strategy under uncertainty Innovation as a leadership behaviour Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and senior leadership teams running through extended restructuring or market repositioning CHROs and chief learning officers building leadership pipelines that have to operate under continuous change Strategy and transformation leaders responsible for cultural readiness alongside operating model change Industry conferences in regulated sectors (financial services, healthcare, energy, government) where leaders manage repeated external shocks Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the roles people play during a disruption, and a way to name which role is missing in their own team The sixteen behaviours that distinguish leaders who use disruption as fuel from those who absorb it as damage A concrete set of tools, drawn from the Vanderbilt research, that leaders can apply to a specific change they are already running A sharper view of the difference between managing crisis and building a leadership culture that expects disruption as a baseline

Why organisations work with Maria Belon A first-person account of catastrophic crisis delivered with the clinical precision of a physician, not the drama of a motivational speaker. The audience leaves with vocabulary, not adrenaline. Clinical and psychotherapy training that gives her a working language for fear, dissociation, and recovery that translates directly into leadership conversations about teams under pressure. A reference point that senior audiences already know. The story behind The Impossible carries instant recognition; Belon uses that recognition as a way in, then takes the conversation somewhere serious. Credibility on both sides of the room. An ESADE MBA and a teaching record in Human Resources at ESADE Business School mean she speaks the language of executive audiences before she ever turns to her own experience. A clear point of view on values and human connection as the operating system that holds organisations together when systems fail, drawn from what she observed in herself, her family, and the strangers around them. Biography highlights Survivor of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Khao Lak, Thailand, with her husband and three sons; sustained life-threatening injuries and underwent a two-year recovery. Spanish physician with additional training as a Humanistic Gestalt psychotherapist. MBA from ESADE; former Human Resources instructor at ESADE Business School. Story formed the basis of The Impossible (2012), directed by J.A. Bayona, with Naomi Watts nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal. Author of the illustrated children’s book Kokoro y el Mar, published by Editorial Libre Albedrio as the first title in her “Yo soy” collection. Speaker at international platforms including the World Business Forum and the Share Iuvare Business Convention. Biography The wave that struck Khao Lak on 26 December 2004 separated a family of five and gave one of them, a Spanish physician on holiday with her husband and three sons, two years of surgery and recovery before something like a normal life returned. Maria Belon now works with senior leaders on what that experience taught her about people under maximum pressure. Her professional background matters here. Belon trained as a physician and as a Humanistic Gestalt psychotherapist, and she holds an MBA from ESADE, where she later taught Human Resources. The combination is unusual. She can speak about the body’s response to trauma with clinical accuracy, and she can speak about organisations with the vocabulary executive audiences already use. What she offers a leadership team is not a survival story performed for effect. It is a precise account of what stayed intact when planning, control, and competence were all stripped away, and what that suggests for the way leaders prepare their people for the unplannable. She has tested the material across international audiences, including the World Business Forum and the Share Iuvare Business Convention. The work has continued in print. Her illustrated children’s book Kokoro y el Mar, published by Editorial Libre Albedrio, distils for a younger reader the same question that director J.A. Bayona once asked her, and that her keynotes return to: what do you bring back from the experiences that life forces on you. Key speaking topics Resilience under extreme adversity Crisis response and recovery Values and human connection in organisations Leadership in moments of breakdown Post-traumatic growth Wellbeing and the human side of performance Ideal for Executive teams and boards preparing for, or reckoning with, organisational crisis CHROs and people leaders building resilience and wellbeing into how their organisation operates Closing keynotes at senior leadership conferences where the brief is to leave the room changed, not informed Healthcare, emergency services and public sector leadership audiences whose work runs close to crisis Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for fear, loss, and recovery that leaders can use with their own teams. A sharper sense of which values actually carry weight when the systems of an organisation fail. An honest reference point for the difference between performance and presence in a crisis. Permission, often missing in senior rooms, to talk about the human cost of pressure without flinching.

Why organisations work with Andrea Loreni He is the only Italian tightrope walker specialised in high-altitude urban crossings. The lived authority is unusual in a leadership-keynote market saturated with frameworks. He set Italy’s record for the highest city tightrope walk in May 2023, crossing 205 metres at 140 metres altitude between Milan’s Bosco Verticale and the UniCredit Tower. Senior audiences recognise the difference between a story and a verifiable feat. His material is built on a degree in Theoretical Philosophy and Zen training under Shodo Harada Roshi at the Sogen-Ji monastery in Okayama. The intellectual scaffolding is real, not decorative. He works the specific tension between fear and decision quality, which sits at the centre of senior leadership but is rarely addressed with credibility outside therapeutic or sports-psychology framings. He is published in Italian on the discipline, with two books from Funambolo Edizioni, and has spoken at TED, universities, banks and multinationals. Biography highlights The only Italian tightrope walker specialised in high-altitude crossings, performing since 2006 across Italy, Switzerland, Serbia, Israel, Thailand and Japan. Set Italy’s record for the highest urban tightrope walk in May 2023, between Milan’s Bosco Verticale and the UniCredit Tower (covered by CNN). Set an earlier Italian record in 2011 at Pennabilli, 250 metres at 90 metres altitude. Degree in Theoretical Philosophy; Zen meditation deepened at Sogen-Ji monastery in Okayama, Japan, under Shodo Harada Roshi. Author of “Zen e funambolismo” (2019) and “Breve corso di funambolismo per chi cammina col vento” (2020). TED speaker; collaborates with Giulia Schiavone (University of Milan-Bicocca) on tightrope walking as a discipline of personal transformation. Biography In May 2023, a man walked 205 metres of cable strung 140 metres above central Milan, between the Bosco Verticale and the UniCredit Tower. It was Italy’s highest ever urban tightrope walk. CNN covered it. The walker was Andrea Loreni, the only Italian funambulist who specialises in high-altitude crossings. What makes him useful to corporate audiences is not the spectacle. It is what he has had to learn to make the spectacle survivable. Loreni has a degree in Theoretical Philosophy and trained in Zen meditation at the Sogen-Ji monastery in Okayama, Japan, under Shodo Harada Roshi. His working material is the relationship between fear, attention and decision quality at the moment of action. He has performed cable crossings since 2006, in Turin, Bologna, Rome, Venice, Florence, Genoa, Brescia and Trieste, and abroad in Switzerland, Serbia, Israel, Thailand and Japan. He is also the author of two books on the discipline, published in Italian: “Zen e funambolismo” (2019) and “Breve corso di funambolismo per chi cammina col vento” (2020). With Giulia Schiavone of the University of Milan-Bicocca, he researches the tightrope as a vehicle for transformation, not only performance. The keynote sits at a precise point. Senior leaders are asked to act with composure under conditions where the cost of error is high and personal. Loreni does that for a living, on a 20mm rope above a city, and he has the philosophical training to articulate what makes it work. Key speaking topics Composure and decision-making under extreme pressure Fear, risk and acceptance Zen practice applied to performance Managing imbalance and change Attention and presence in high-stakes moments Personal transformation through discipline Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and executive team gatherings where the agenda includes pressure, composure and decision quality Sales and trading floor audiences accustomed to live decision risk Annual conferences seeking a substantive keynote with lived authority rather than business-school content Leadership development programmes for newly senior leaders Audience outcomes A vivid, credible reframe of fear as something to live with rather than defeat Specific Zen-rooted attentional practice connected to high-stakes performance A new vocabulary for talking about composure, balance and risk in leadership settings A memorable shared reference point that surfaces in subsequent leadership conversations

Why organisations work with JJ Birden He translates a specific professional discipline, NFL receiver preparation, into a six-step execution model that sales leaders can actually run their teams against, not a general motivation talk. He is a credible voice on long-odds performance. At 5’10” and 157 pounds across nine NFL seasons, his career itself is the case study for the content he delivers. He is built for sales kickoffs and field events. Buyers consistently book him for national sales meetings where the brief is energy plus a usable framework, not abstract leadership theory. He is the author of When Opportunity Knocks: 8 Surefire Ways to Take Advantage, which gives sales and franchise audiences a take-home structure beyond the keynote itself. Biography highlights Nine NFL seasons, 1988 to 1996, with Cleveland Browns, Kansas City Chiefs, and Atlanta Falcons; 244 career receptions, 3,441 yards, 17 touchdowns. 8th round pick in the 1988 NFL Draft, 216th overall. Member of the University of Oregon 1985 NCAA Championship Track and Field team; inducted into the University of Oregon Athletic Hall of Fame in 2010. Pac-10 long jump champion in 1988 and qualifier for the 1988 US Olympic Trials in the long jump. Author of When Opportunity Knocks: 8 Surefire Ways to Take Advantage. Keynote client list across bureau records includes Bank of America, Aflac, Hershey, Orangetheory Fitness, Arrow Electronics, Merrill Lynch, MassMutual, Pearle Vision, and O’Reilly Auto Parts. Biography The average NFL career lasts roughly three seasons. JJ Birden played nine, at 5’10” and 157 pounds, in a position where every other receiver on the field was bigger and faster on paper. That gap between physical odds and sustained output is the substance of what he now teaches. He came into the league as an 8th round pick of the Cleveland Browns in 1988, the same year he won the Pac-10 long jump title at Oregon and qualified for the US Olympic Trials. Five seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs, two with Atlanta, and a final receiving line of 244 catches for 3,441 yards and 17 touchdowns followed. What Birden built after football is a translation of receiver preparation into business execution. The six-step Beat the Coverage frame runs from reading the field through finding the gap, playing to strengths, drawing the plan, building the reps, and executing under pressure. It is a sales kickoff framework dressed in a playbook, not a motivational metaphor. He is a University of Oregon Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, author of When Opportunity Knocks: 8 Surefire Ways to Take Advantage, and a recurring keynote at national sales meetings for organisations including Aflac, Hershey, Bank of America, Orangetheory Fitness, and O’Reilly Auto Parts. Buyers book him when the brief is execution discipline and competitive intensity for a field audience. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Individual accountability in team environments Opportunity recognition and execution Sales team motivation and discipline Resilience and long-odds performance Preparation as a competitive variable Ideal for Sales leaders running national or regional kickoff meetings Field and franchise organisations under quarterly performance pressure Leadership audiences who want execution content rather than strategy content Athletic and high-performance programmes Audience outcomes A six-step playbook (Beat the Coverage) that sales managers can apply against specific accounts and pipeline stages A sharper read on where preparation actually drives results, separate from talent and circumstance Permission to compete from a disadvantaged position without treating it as a story about disadvantage A direct frame for individual accountability inside teams that have plateaued