Resilience & Stress Management

Why organisations work with Sílvia Vidal She offers a first-person account of high-stakes performance with no team, no rescue, and no communication, on expeditions that run up to two months at a time and include weeks living alone on the wall, which translates directly into senior conversations about judgement under pressure. She holds international recognition at the top of her sport: a Special Mention at the Piolets d’Or 2021 in Briancon for two decades of solo big wall climbing, and Spain’s Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sporting Merit in 2022. She speaks credibly about fear and uncertainty as managed working conditions rather than abstractions, drawing on first ascents in Patagonia, the Karakorum, the Himalaya, the Andes, and Alaska, among others. She is unusual in choosing complete communication blackout on every expedition: no radio, no phone, no GPS, no weather forecasts. She carries the same principle into daily life, where she has never owned a mobile phone, so the discipline is lived rather than performed. She presents internationally in both English and Spanish, with more than 25 years on stage for corporate and festival audiences across Europe, the Americas, and beyond. Biography highlights Special Mention at the Piolets d’Or 2021, Briancon, for outstanding contribution to solo big wall climbing over two decades Spanish Piolet de Oro (1996), Spanish Mountain Federation, for the solo first ascent of Principado de Asturias Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sporting Merit (2022), Spanish High Council of Sports Honorary Member of the Spanish Geographic Society (2023) Solo first ascents on remote walls across five continents, including Sincronia Magica (Cerro Chileno Grande, Patagonia, 33 days on the wall) and Un pas mes (Arrigetch, Alaska, 53-day expedition) Master’s degree in Physical Education, INEFC-Barcelona Biography The west face of Cerro Chileno Grande in Patagonian Chile is a 1,200-metre granite wall in one of the least visited corners of the Aysen region. In 2020 Sílvia Vidal spent 33 days alone on it, opening a new route called Sincronia Magica, with no radio, no phone, no GPS, and no weather forecasts. The Piolets d’Or jury cited that climb, and the two decades behind it, when they awarded her a Special Mention in Briancon in 2021. Vidal was born in Barcelona in 1970, came into climbing through adventure racing during a Master’s in Physical Education at INEFC-Barcelona, and within a couple of years was climbing at the hardest aid grades, A5. The 1996 solo first ascent of Principado de Asturias in northern Spain earned her the Spanish Piolet de Oro from the Spanish Mountain Federation. Since then she has put up first ascents on remote walls in Patagonia, the Karakorum, the Himalaya, the Andes, and Alaska, including Un pas mes in the Arrigetch range, a 53-day expedition in 2017. What separates her from most extreme-environment speakers is the choice of complete communication blackout. She hauls her own gear, lives on the wall for weeks, and has no contact with the outside world until she walks out. Spain’s High Council of Sports awarded her the Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sporting Merit in 2022, and the Spanish Geographic Society made her an Honorary Member in 2023. Across more than 25 years she has presented to corporate and festival audiences in Europe, Canada, and Peru in English and Spanish. The argument she brings to a leadership audience is concrete. Composure under pressure is not a personality trait. It is built before the wall, tested every day on it, and rebuilt every time fear arrives without warning. The lessons that come back down with her are about preparation, self-honesty, and the difference between solitude and loneliness when there is genuinely no help available. Key speaking topics Decision-making under irreversible commitment Composure and self-leadership under sustained pressure Working with fear and uncertainty Preparation as the foundation of high-stakes performance Solitude, focus, and self-reliance Resilience in extreme environments Ideal for Executive and senior leadership off-sites focused on judgement and composure under pressure Risk, operations, and safety leadership audiences who want a practitioner-level account, not a metaphor Company-wide events looking for credible inspiration anchored in a verifiable record Leadership development programmes on resilience, self-management, and decision-making Audience outcomes A concrete benchmark for what sustained performance under pressure actually requires A practical relationship with fear and uncertainty as working conditions, not obstacles Specific language for talking about preparation and risk that leaders can carry into their own decisions A model of resilience built on preparation, daily routine, and self-honesty under sustained pressure A reset on what self-leadership looks like when no one is watching and no help is available A different reference point for attention and focus, from someone whose work depends on sustained concentration with no notifications, no inbox, and no way to call for help

Why organisations work with Andre Agassi He has a documented, named comeback, world No. 141 in 1997 to world No. 1 in 1999, which gives leadership audiences a specific case study in rebuilding after public failure rather than a generic resilience message. He is one of nine men in history to complete a career Grand Slam, a credential that carries instant authority with sales, sports, and executive audiences without requiring any further framing. His second act is operational, not ceremonial. The Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund has developed more than 120 school buildings, which gives him genuine standing on scaling mission-led ventures, not just philanthropy as biography. Open, his memoir written with J.R. Moehringer, is a No. 1 New York Times bestseller treated seriously by literary critics, which signals the reflective honesty leadership audiences expect from a keynote on reinvention. He is one of very few speakers who can hold a corporate leadership room, a sales conference, and an education forum with equal credibility, because each credential is independently verifiable. Biography highlights Eight Grand Slam singles titles across the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open, and a career Grand Slam completed in 1999. Olympic gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Games, and member of three winning United States Davis Cup teams. 60 ATP singles titles, 101 weeks at world No. 1, and year-end No. 1 in 1999. Inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2011. Founder of the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education, which has raised over $180 million, and the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in West Las Vegas. Co-founder with Bobby Turner of the Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund, a real estate vehicle that has financed more than 120 charter school facilities. Author of Open: An Autobiography, a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. Biography In 1997, the player who had won Wimbledon five years earlier was ranked No. 141 in the world. Two years later he won the French Open, completed the career Grand Slam, and finished the season as world No. 1. That arc is the reason serious leadership audiences listen to Andre Agassi. The eight Grand Slam titles, the 1996 Olympic gold, the 101 weeks at No. 1, and the 2011 induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame are the headline credentials. What makes them useful in a boardroom is the honesty about what the comeback cost. Open, written with Pulitzer Prize winner J.R. Moehringer and a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, is the public record of that reckoning, treated by reviewers as a serious memoir rather than a sports book. His operating work has held up to the same scrutiny. The Andre Agassi Foundation for Education, founded in 1994, has raised over $180 million and anchors the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in West Las Vegas. With investor Bobby Turner, he built the Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund, a real estate platform that has developed more than 120 charter school buildings serving tens of thousands of students. He is also a board member and investor in Square Panda, an early-literacy education technology company. For a senior audience, the value is the combination. Elite performance credentialed at the highest level, a comeback story that is specific rather than mythologised, and a post-career record built through institutional vehicles that other operators take seriously. A leader preparing for a period of pressure, transition, or public reinvention gets a case study, not a speech. Key speaking topics Performance under sustained public pressure Reinvention after a public setback Leadership through career transition Legacy and second-act ventures Scaling mission-led organisations Education reform and philanthropy at institutional scale Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and CEO forums working through a public reinvention or strategic reset Sales kickoffs and top-performer conferences where the brief is sustained performance under scrutiny Board and philanthropy events focused on legacy, second-act ventures, and mission-driven capital Education sector gatherings on charter school scaling, early literacy, and philanthropic models Audience outcomes A specific, named case study of rebuilding elite performance after public failure, drawn from the 1997 to 1999 comeback. A clear view of what separates a mythologised comeback story from a real operational reset, and what leaders can borrow from each. A working model for how a high-profile career transitions into institutional operating work, using the Agassi Foundation and Turner-Agassi fund as reference points. Renewed clarity on how personal authenticity, honestly examined in Open, functions as a leadership asset rather than a liability.

Why organisations work with Ryan Tillman Conflict and de-escalation content built from real shifts on patrol and in crisis negotiation, not adapted from a corporate training module. A direct, lived perspective on bias and inclusion from someone who once distrusted policing and chose to join it, which lands with audiences who have tuned out of standard DEI sessions. Author of Happy Eyes: Becoming All Things To All People, with a foreword by Dak Prescott and afterword by Gordon Graham, giving the keynote a published spine that leaders can read and pass on. Founder of Breaking Barriers United, a programme used by law enforcement agencies and corporate clients to rebuild communication between groups that have stopped trusting each other. Significant earned reach through the #ITSNEEDED podcast and a social audience that has accumulated over 100 million views, which lifts internal engagement before and after the event. Biography highlights Police Officer, Chino Police Department, Southern California, since 2013. Founder and CEO, Breaking Barriers United LLC. Author, Happy Eyes: Becoming All Things To All People, foreword by Dak Prescott, afterword by Gordon Graham, endorsed by Michael Strahan. Host, #ITSNEEDED podcast, with more than one million downloads. Featured on FOX 11 Los Angeles, NBC Los Angeles, ABC News and Voyage LA. Training and content partnerships with Lexipol, Open Sesame and the Heal America Movement. Biography Most organisational fractures begin as a communication problem. A manager misreads a team member, a customer interaction tips into hostility, a difficult conversation gets postponed until it becomes a grievance. The skills that prevent those failures are the same ones a patrol officer learns in the first minute of a call, and they are rarely taught inside corporate training. Ryan Tillman built his career inside that gap. A serving officer with the Chino Police Department in Southern California, he founded Breaking Barriers United to address what he saw on both sides of the badge: a breakdown in trust between people who needed to understand each other to function. The work began in policing and quickly moved into workplaces, where the underlying dynamics, bias, fear, misread intent, were identical. His book, Happy Eyes: Becoming All Things To All People, with a foreword by Dak Prescott and afterword by Gordon Graham, sets out the operating philosophy: meet people where they are, lead with respect, and use empathy as a practical tool rather than a slogan. The #ITSNEEDED podcast has carried that material into more than a million downloads, and his social channels have accumulated over 100 million views across appearances on FOX 11 LA, NBC Los Angeles and ABC News. What he brings into a corporate room is not motivation. It is a working method for the conversations that decide whether a culture holds together: how to read a situation before it escalates, how to disagree without losing trust, how to lead across difference without retreating into policy. Senior teams take from him the same thing his colleagues do on patrol, a steadier set of instincts for the moments that matter most. Key speaking topics Communication and trust at work De-escalation and conflict resolution Bias, inclusion and bridging divides Leadership under pressure Crisis response and personal safety Culture change in operational environments Empathy as a practical leadership skill Ideal for CHROs, heads of culture and DEI sponsors looking for content on inclusion that lands with sceptical audiences. Safety, security and risk leaders responsible for de-escalation, customer-facing conflict and frontline workforce protection. Senior leadership teams in operationally complex sectors (healthcare, retail, transport, public services) where communication failures carry real cost. Internal events focused on rebuilding engagement and trust after restructure, layoffs or visible cultural strain. Audience outcomes A clearer read on how everyday interactions either build or erode trust inside a team. Specific techniques for de-escalating conflict before it becomes a formal incident. A more confident vocabulary for talking about bias and difference without defaulting to slogans. A practical model for leading across viewpoints that disagree, drawn from policing and negotiation practice. A renewed sense among managers that culture is set in their own conversations, not in the policy document.

Why organisations work with Mark Wilkinson Pairs an operational safety credential, Chartered Member of the Institute of Safety and Health, with personality diversity practice through Equilibria’s E-Colours framework. That combination is unusual on the speaker circuit, where wellbeing voices rarely carry frontline safety standing. Translates personality difference into safety behaviour. The argument that an extroverted risk-taker and a cautious analyst will hear the same toolbox talk in opposite ways gives leaders a concrete way to redesign briefings, supervision and incident review. Lived recovery from collapse, addiction, bankruptcy and depression gives the resilience material first-hand authority. The story is supported by a published book, Life Remixed, endorsed by Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff. Works comfortably across heavy industry, energy and corporate audiences, including engagements such as Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival, and adapts the same material for a leadership offsite or a frontline safety stand-down. Brings the production craft of a former Ministry of Sound resident DJ into the room. Music, video and live elements are part of the delivery, which lands with audiences who switch off during conventional keynotes. Biography highlights Chartered Member of the Institute of Safety and Health (CMIOSH) and Fellow of the Institute of Leadership (FIoL). Certified E-Colours personality diversity practitioner through Equilibria, working with leadership teams across energy, sport and corporate sectors. Author of Life Remixed: Looking Beyond The Dance To Face The Music, published 2021, with foreword endorsements from Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff. Host of the Life Remixed podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Former international house music DJ with a Ministry of Sound residency, performances in 65 countries and a UK Top 10 chart entry as part of Dab Hands with the remix of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love”. Speaker at Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival and across health, safety and leadership programmes for industrial and corporate clients. Biography Behavioural safety has a translation problem. Two people on the same site, given the same briefing, will walk away with different versions of what was said and different views of the risk in front of them. Wilkinson’s working argument is that personality difference is a structural variable in safety and engagement, not a soft factor to be managed around. He works that argument through Equilibria’s E-Colours framework, where he is a certified practitioner, and through his Chartered standing with the Institute of Safety and Health. The combination matters: the diagnostic of human difference is paired with operational health and safety credibility, which is what gives the work purchase in heavy industry and energy clients rather than only in leadership development settings. The personal story sits behind the professional one. A former Ministry of Sound resident DJ with a UK Top 10 chart credit, Wilkinson collapsed at 33 and lost income, home and relationship across an 18-month recovery. He rebuilt through health and safety work and personal development study, and wrote Life Remixed, endorsed by Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff, as the account of that rebuild. For organisations, that biography is useful because it lets him hold a room of frontline operators and a room of senior leaders with the same material. The safety and personality work gives the talk its operational edge. The recovery narrative gives it the emotional weight that makes the safety message actually stick. Key speaking topics Behavioural safety and human factors Personality diversity in the workplace Resilience and personal recovery Mental wellbeing and mindset Leadership communication across personality types Engagement in high-risk operational environments Ideal for Heads of HSE, safety leadership teams and operational directors in energy, construction, aviation and manufacturing HR and culture leads designing engagement, wellbeing or behavioural change programmes Leadership and learning teams running offsites that need a credible voice on personal resilience Frontline conferences and toolbox events where a conventional academic keynote will lose the room Audience outcomes A working model for why the same safety message lands differently across a workforce and what to change about briefings as a result A vocabulary for personality difference that supervisors and team leads can use without specialist training A first-hand account of recovery from collapse and addiction that opens room for honest conversation about wellbeing A reframe of behavioural safety as a leadership and communication problem, not only a compliance one

Why organisations work with Paula Stone Williams A first-person comparative account of professional life as a senior man and a senior woman, drawing on lived experience that almost no other speaker can offer at the executive level. A memoir published by Simon & Schuster (As a Woman, 2021), four TED talks with combined viewership over nine million, and sustained coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and CNN. Substantive content on the mechanics of allyship for male leaders, framed as a practical capability rather than a values statement. A speaker who can address gender equity and LGBTQ+ inclusion in the same keynote without flattening either, useful to organisations where these conversations are usually held in separate rooms. Biography highlights Author of As a Woman: What I Learned About Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy After I Transitioned (Simon & Schuster, 2021), optioned by Cannonball Productions for a limited series. Co-author of She’s My Dad with her son Jonathan Williams. TED, TEDWomen, TEDSummit and TEDxMileHigh speaker; four talks with combined viewership over nine million. Featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, ABC Primetime News, Good Morning America, People Magazine and Red Table Talk. Pastor of preaching and worship at Left Hand Church, Longmont, Colorado. Pastoral counselor with RLT Pathways; doctorate in counseling. Biography Most workplace gender equity programmes are designed by people who have only ever held authority inside one set of expectations. Paula Stone Williams has held senior roles as both a man and a woman, and her keynote work is built on the comparative material that produced. The argument is empirical rather than rhetorical: the same person, the same competence, two markedly different professional experiences. Her memoir As a Woman: What I Learned About Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy After I Transitioned was published by Simon & Schuster in 2021 and has been optioned by Cannonball Productions. Her TED, TEDWomen, TEDSummit and TEDxMileHigh talks have together passed nine million views. The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Good Morning America and People Magazine have covered her work. Alongside the keynote practice she is a pastoral counselor with RLT Pathways and pastor of preaching and worship at Left Hand Church in Longmont, Colorado. The counseling background shapes how she handles the room, which matters in this subject area; audiences leave with material they can act on rather than only feelings they have processed. The most useful thing she gives a corporate audience is a precise account of how allyship behaves in practice. Male leaders who want to support women and LGBTQ+ colleagues are often unsure what the substantive ask actually is. Williams names it directly, with examples, and treats it as a capability that can be learned. Key speaking topics Workplace gender equity LGBTQ+ inclusion in corporate environments Allyship as a practical capability for senior leaders Authority, voice and credibility across gender Storytelling and narrative communication Resilience through identity and career change Bridging cultural and religious divides Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads designing substantive inclusion work after initial awareness programmes. Senior leadership offsites where male executives are the intended audience for an allyship conversation. Women’s leadership networks and ERGs commissioning an external voice on workplace parity. Universities, professional services firms and faith-adjacent institutions navigating LGBTQ+ inclusion under public scrutiny. Audience outcomes A first-person frame of reference for how authority is extended differently to men and women in the same senior role. A concrete vocabulary for what allyship looks like inside a meeting, a hiring decision and a promotion conversation. A view of LGBTQ+ inclusion grounded in lived experience rather than abstract policy language. Material that male leaders, in particular, can repeat back to their teams without feeling they are reciting a script.

Why organisations work with Mo Gawdat His central AI thesis – that these systems reflect the values humans encode into them, and that organisations still have a window to act – was published in 2021 and validated by the subsequent speed of AI deployment. Boards are not getting speculation; they are getting a forecast with a track record. Scary Smart gives senior leadership a specific accountability framework, not a risk briefing: the argument is that the question is not whether AI will be powerful, but what the organisation is actively doing to shape its values now. The Solve for Happy happiness model is a named, reproducible framework developed through the same engineering logic Gawdat applied throughout his technology career – not a wellbeing programme, but a systematic methodology for building psychological stability under pressure. He addresses the external disruption (AI’s structural impact on work and value) and the internal response (the human psychology of navigating it) as a single argument – which is why his sessions land differently in a strategy forum than a conventional AI speaker or a conventional wellbeing speaker would. Seven years inside Google [X] at the point when self-driving cars, Project Loon, and Google Life Sciences were being built and commercialised gives him a credibility baseline that no amount of research or commentary can replicate. Biography highlights Former Chief Business Officer, Google [X] (2013-2018), overseeing commercial strategy for Google’s moonshot innovation division 30-year career in technology spanning IBM, NCR, Microsoft, and Google, including senior roles across emerging markets globally Author of Solve for Happy (Macmillan, 2017), Scary Smart (Macmillan, 2021), That Little Voice in Your Head (Macmillan, 2022), and Unstressable (2024, co-authored with psychologist Alice Law) Scary Smart named a Sunday Times Business Book of the Year (2021) Chief AI Officer at Flight Story, the digital marketing company co-founded by Steven Bartlett Founder of One Billion Happy, a global initiative to share structured approaches to happiness and wellbeing Host of Slo Mo, one of the leading mental health podcasts globally Biography When Scary Smart was published in 2021, its central argument read as speculative: AI would become superintelligent, its real danger lay not in the technology itself but in the values humans encode into it, and organisations still had a narrow window to shape the outcome. Within a year, the release of ChatGPT had reframed the argument as a warning that had arrived early. Mo Gawdat had been inside Google [X] when these systems were being built. Gawdat joined Google in 2007 and served as Chief Business Officer of Google [X] from 2013, overseeing commercial strategy for the moonshot division behind self-driving cars, Project Loon, and Google Life Sciences. His seven years there gave him direct exposure to both the capability and the accountability gaps at the frontier of AI development. He left in 2018 and now serves as Chief AI Officer at Flight Story, the digital marketing company co-founded by Steven Bartlett. The parallel body of work on happiness was not a departure from his technology career. It emerged from the same engineering mindset applied to personal crisis. Following the death of his son Ali in 2014, Gawdat developed the framework at the centre of Solve for Happy: a systematic, reproducible model for well-being grounded in cognitive science. The book became an international bestseller. His thesis is that the two bodies of work are not separate. An organisation that understands the human psychology of its people is better positioned to navigate the disruption AI will accelerate. Unstressable, co-authored with psychologist Alice Law and published in 2024, extends that logic into a practical stress-management framework built around four human systems. He hosts Slo Mo, one of the leading mental health podcasts globally, and his earlier books – That Little Voice in Your Head (2022) and Scary Smart, a Sunday Times Business Book of the Year – continue to reach executive audiences grappling with AI governance and personal resilience across a 30-year technology career. Key speaking topics AI ethics and governance Responsible AI adoption The human impact of AI disruption Happiness science and the engineering of well-being Stress management frameworks Technology leadership and strategic foresight Human values in AI development Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams making AI governance and adoption decisions Chief People Officers and Chief Technology Officers managing workforce responses to AI disruption Strategy, transformation, and future of work forums where AI risk and human resilience intersect Technology, financial services, and marketing organisations with significant and growing AI exposure Audience outcomes A coherent framework for evaluating AI’s ethical and human risks, grounded in direct experience of building these systems rather than external commentary Clarity on what values organisations need to embed in AI systems now, and why the window to do so meaningfully is narrowing Practical tools from the Solve for Happy model for building psychological stability and resilience under conditions of sustained uncertainty A more calibrated understanding of the timeline and direction of AI development, distinct from both catastrophism and uncritical optimism Practical techniques from Unstressable for identifying and reducing sources of stress at individual and team level

Why organisations work with Marc Convey A first-hand account of post-traumatic growth that gives audiences permission to discuss adversity, fear, and visible difference without sliding into clinical or HR-policy register. Years as a campaigner for Changing Faces, the UK charity for people with visible difference, which informs how he handles inclusion and self-image conversations inside organisations. A working life that crossed live poker broadcasting, video production, and non-profit leadership, which gives him commercial fluency when speaking to corporate audiences. A track record on charged platforms, including a suicide prevention evening at Brighton Dome for Baton of Hope, where he has delivered a keynote that holds an audience through difficult material. Biography highlights Two-year voluntary campaigner with Changing Faces, the UK charity for people with visible difference. Keynote speaker at the Baton of Hope suicide prevention event at Brighton Dome. Client testimonial from Cristina Proietti, Head of Commercial Operations at WHSmith Travel. Former globally-travelled poker commentator across the live tournament circuit. Founder of his own video production business and operator of a non-profit focused on “working with purpose.” Writes the Substack “Making a Marc” and appears regularly on podcasts including “Man Up / Man Down.” Biography A fire at 14 left Marc Convey with burns that he carries today. The decision that followed shaped the rest of his life: refuse to be defined by the injury, and build the inner resources to face what came next. That choice now sits at the centre of his speaking work. Before turning to the stage, he spent years commentating on live poker tournaments around the world. He then ran a video production company and built a non-profit focused on what he calls “working with purpose.” Each of those careers fed the next, and gave him the commercial language to address corporate audiences without losing the personal core. His signature keynote, The Gift of Adversity, draws on that long road back. Audiences hear a specific story, not a generic message, and leave with a more grounded vocabulary for fear, recovery, and the meaning of difference. The work has reached charged platforms, including a Baton of Hope suicide prevention evening at Brighton Dome, and corporate floors at WHSmith Travel. Beyond the stage he writes the “Making a Marc” Substack and serves a two-year campaigner role with Changing Faces, the UK charity for people living with visible difference. That campaigning work is what separates his content from the wider motivational category: he is in active service to a population whose lived experience he shares. Key speaking topics Resilience and post-traumatic growth Adversity and recovery from setback Mental health and wellbeing at work Visible difference and self-image Fear, change, and personal transformation Authentic leadership and inner resources Team culture grounded in values Ideal for CHROs and HR leaders programming mental health, wellbeing, or culture events Internal communications and culture leads commissioning all-hands or away-day keynotes Charities, healthcare bodies, and public service audiences working on suicide prevention or visible difference Audience outcomes A direct first-hand account of trauma and recovery that gives audiences permission to talk honestly about adversity at work A more concrete vocabulary for fear, setback, and visible difference than wellbeing programmes typically offer Language and reference points that internal communicators can carry into culture and engagement conversations after the talk A confident sense that post-traumatic growth is achievable, anchored in a specific lived example rather than abstract claim

Why organisations work with Tom Turcich His credibility is not analogical: it is verifiable. The world walk is ranked in a finite historical list of ten people, documented in a published memoir, and covered by CNN, BBC, Good Morning America, The Guardian, and The Today Show. Seven continuous years of forward motion without a salary, fixed team, or guaranteed outcome offers a model of value-driven decision-making that is directly applicable to organisations sustaining long-term transformation. His Circle of Possibility framework reframes constraints as inputs to problem-solving rather than barriers to progress, making his content directly usable by teams operating under resource pressure or strategic uncertainty. The journey was values-led from day one: Turcich navigated every decision – including years of solitude, a global pandemic, and active conflict zones – by a clear internal compass. That makes his framework credible for organisations focused on purpose-driven culture rather than performance management alone. Biography highlights Tenth person in recorded history to complete a circumnavigation of the globe on foot Seven-year, 28,000-mile journey across six continents and 38 countries, beginning April 2015 His rescue dog Savannah became the first dog ever to walk around the world Author of The World Walk (Skyhorse Publishing, 2024), a full-length memoir of the expedition Featured by CNN, BBC, Good Morning America, The Guardian, and The Today Show Author of the Savannah’s World of Adventure children’s book series Biography Most people’s resilience is tested in months. Tom Turcich spent seven years walking 28,000 miles across six continents and 38 countries; a journey that placed him in the historically small group of ten people ever recorded to have circled the globe on foot. That context is not incidental to his work with organisations. It is the evidence. The walk began the day before his 26th birthday, prompted by the death of a close friend that forced a reckoning with how a life should be spent. It ended in May 2022. Along the way, Turcich navigated deserts, conflict zones, a global pandemic, and sustained solitude; guided not by a fixed itinerary but by a set of core values he had articulated before he left. His memoir, The World Walk (Skyhorse Publishing, 2024), documents both the physical journey and the decision-making architecture that sustained it. For organisations, the relevance lies not in the spectacle of the achievement but in its mechanics. His talks, built around the Circle of Possibility framework, address the specific tension between ambitious long-term goals and the daily reality of setback, discomfort, and unclear progress. The same principles that kept him moving across the Andes and through Central Asia translate directly to teams operating under sustained strategic pressure. His story has been covered by CNN, BBC, Good Morning America, The Guardian, and The Today Show. The World Walk received endorsements from two New York Times bestselling authors. A second non-fiction book, applying the lessons of the walk to organisational and professional life, is in progress. Key speaking topics Long-term resilience and sustained commitment Values-driven decision-making Goal-setting under uncertainty Reframing constraints as catalysts Purpose and personal accountability Endurance mindset in professional contexts Ideal for Leadership and executive teams navigating multi-year change programmes Sales and commercial conferences requiring a credible performance and resilience narrative Employee engagement and offsite events where purpose and motivation are central themes HR and people leaders building resilience culture within the workforce Audience outcomes A practical framework (Circle of Possibility) for sustaining commitment when progress is slow or unclear A more granular understanding of what resilience looks like in practice over an extended timeframe: not as a trait but as a set of daily decisions Sharper thinking about how personal values can function as a decision-making tool under pressure Perspective on the relationship between constraints and creative problem-solving A reframe of long-term ambition: from an abstract goal to a sequence of deliberate, manageable steps

Why organisations work with David Patton His research with Professor David Best, published in the Journal of Drug Issues, makes a clean argument that pull factors and turning points, not pain or crisis, drive sustained behavioural change. That reframes how leaders think about wellbeing, resilience and post-crisis recovery. He runs New Central Media, the platform behind Recovery Capital: Pathways Through Prison, a book with a foreword by Dame Carol Black that was accepted as national evidence for a Parliamentary review. That is a working track record of turning research into policy traction. His material is built with people who have rebuilt their lives after addiction and incarceration, which gives audiences a level of human authenticity that conventional behaviour-change keynotes cannot match. He has presented at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs and works internationally with the World Federation of Therapeutic Communities, so he speaks with the authority of someone whose research is taken seriously by policymakers, not only by academics. His framework on connection, collaboration, community and creativity as antidotes to isolation and burnout is directly transferable to corporate culture, employee wellbeing and engagement work. Biography highlights Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Derby, Centre for Applied Social Sciences, Policy, Practice and Research PhD, University of Sheffield; Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Founder and Director of New Central Media; lead of Recovery Atlas, a global participatory photovoice archive Co-author with Professor David Best of peer-reviewed work on pull factors and turning points in addiction recovery, published in the Journal of Drug Issues Editor and contributor to Recovery Capital: Pathways Through Prison, Women’s Recovery Capital Pathways and Lived Experience Recovery Organisations Has presented at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, including a 2023 manifesto on stigma in addiction recovery Former Senior Researcher at the University of Cambridge; principal investigator on Home Office, ESRC, NIHR and Big Lottery Fund projects Biography The dominant assumption in behaviour-change psychology is that people change when the pain gets bad enough. Research published in the Journal of Drug Issues by David Patton and David Best argues the opposite. Across the life narratives of people in long-term addiction recovery, the consistent driver is not crisis but a pull toward something better: meaning, hope, community, a turning point. That finding moves the conversation about recovery, resilience and wellbeing onto a different footing. Patton is Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Derby, based in the Centre for Applied Social Sciences, Policy, Practice and Research. His work is built directly with people who have rebuilt their lives after addiction and incarceration, using participatory methods including photovoice and digital storytelling. The international expression of that approach is Recovery Atlas, a global archive linked to recovery communities worldwide. He also runs New Central Media, the publishing platform behind Recovery Capital: Pathways Through Prison, Women’s Recovery Capital Pathways and Lived Experience Recovery Organisations. The prison volume, with a foreword by Dame Carol Black, was accepted as national evidence for a Parliamentary review of prison-based recovery. He has presented at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs and works with the World Federation of Therapeutic Communities on projects across Latin America and Africa. For organisations rethinking employee wellbeing, post-crisis resilience or behavioural change at scale, Patton brings something specific: an evidence base on what actually sustains change in the hardest cases, drawn from people whose lives depended on getting it right. The transfer into corporate culture, talent and engagement strategy is direct. Key speaking topics Pull factors and turning points in behavioural change Addiction recovery and the science of human flourishing Connection, community and creativity as antidotes to isolation Lived experience and participatory research Stigma, marginalisation and inclusion Drug policy reform and the role of recovery communities Wellbeing and resilience after crisis Ideal for CHROs and wellbeing leads designing mental health, recovery and resilience strategy Leadership teams in healthcare, criminal justice, social care and the third sector Conferences on the future of work, wellbeing, inclusion and human flourishing Policy and public sector audiences working on drug policy, prisons and rehabilitation Audience outcomes A research-grounded reframing of what sustains behavioural change, drawn from peer-reviewed work Specific language for talking about pull factors, turning points and recovery capital inside an organisation Direct insight into how lived experience can be built into research, policy and programme design A clearer view of how connection, community and meaning operate as antidotes to burnout and disengagement Reference material from Recovery Capital: Pathways Through Prison and related publications for follow-up

Why organisations work with Bella Smith Clinical authority that holds up in the room. Twenty years as an NHS GP partner means the advice survives challenge from medical, HR and legal stakeholders alike. Operator credentials, not only commentary. Through The Well HQ she has built women’s health frameworks for clients including the FA and corporate employers, translating physiology into policy. A Sunday Times bestselling co-author of The Female Body Bible, the most cited recent reference book on female-specific health and performance in the UK market. Ambassador status with The Eve Appeal gives her standing on gynaecological health that goes beyond menopause, the topic most women’s health speakers default to. Direct, plain-language register. Audiences leave with vocabulary they can use the next day, in policy drafting, line-management conversations and personal decisions. Biography highlights NHS GP partner with over 20 years of clinical experience, specialising in women’s health Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of The Well HQ, a women’s health consultancy Co-author of The Female Body Bible (Penguin, 2023), a Sunday Times bestseller Ambassador for The Eve Appeal, the UK gynaecological cancer charity Media spokesperson as The Digital GP, with appearances on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio Suffolk and Sky News Co-led the design of an integrated female health framework across the Women’s Super League, the National Leagues and grassroots football Biography Women’s health has spent a decade being talked about and rarely being built into how organisations actually operate. Policies on menopause sit in handbooks no manager reads. Wellness budgets fund webinars that leave behavioural change untouched. The work of moving from sentiment to system is technical, and it is what Bella Smith does. She has been an NHS GP partner in Suffolk for over twenty years, with a clinical specialism in women’s health. That practice is the source of the directness audiences notice first. The advice is what she would give in a consultation, stripped of corporate hedging. In 2021 she co-founded The Well HQ with sports scientist Dr Emma Ross and coach Baz Moffat. The consultancy works with employers and sports bodies to translate female physiology into policy, manager training and culture. Their work with the FA produced an integrated female health framework spanning the Women’s Super League, National Leagues and grassroots football, the first of its kind. The Female Body Bible, co-authored with Ross and Moffat and published by Penguin in 2023, became a Sunday Times bestseller. It is now the reference text many HR teams use when they begin to take this seriously. As an ambassador for The Eve Appeal and a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and Sky News, she has spent years closing the gap between clinical knowledge and public conversation. Inside organisations, that gap is where most policy fails. Key speaking topics Women’s health in the workplace Menopause policy and management Reproductive and gynaecological health Female physiology and performance Stress and lifestyle medicine Health communication and taboo Ideal for CHROs, heads of D&I and reward leads building or auditing women’s health policy Line manager and leadership audiences who need clinical fluency, not slogans Sports, performance and athlete-welfare organisations Employee resource groups and women’s networks running serious internal programming Audience outcomes A clinical baseline on menopause, reproductive health and female physiology that survives scrutiny Vocabulary and questions managers can use in their next one-to-one A clear view of where current workplace policy falls short, and what good looks like Practical reference points for HR teams designing or revising women’s health provision

Why organisations work with Paris Norriss The Grit Code gives organisations a repeatable method for developing resilience: not a motivational moment, but a structured framework built from both extreme first-hand experience and interviews with more than 50 documented high performers. It can be applied, not just felt. His source material is verified broadcast content. The adventures Paris describes are not anecdotes: they are documented on productions distributed via Amazon Prime and Apple TV. When the Pacific storm or the 40-foot wave hits, no one questions whether the stakes were real. He draws a distinction most resilience speakers do not: between teams that perform well when conditions are manageable and teams that hold when those conditions break down. The gap between the two is where most organisational performance is actually lost. His career spans investment banking, media production, and extreme endurance sport, which means he can translate the mechanics of sustained performance directly into commercial and operational terms, without forcing the adventure metaphor. His speaking record runs from the US Military in Hawaii to DHL in Athens to COP28 in Dubai. The breadth of context is itself evidence that The Grit Code’s framework transfers across sector, culture, and seniority level. Biography highlights Creator of The Grit Code, a structured resilience framework built from extreme endurance experience and research with more than 50 high performers Rowed 4,800km across the Pacific Ocean (California to Hawaii) with the Brothers N Oars team over 39 days (2023), raising funds for the Blue Marine Foundation and the Invictus Games Completed the World Marathon Challenge: 7 marathons on 7 continents in 5 days and 21 hours (2025), having previously run a single marathon Host and Executive Producer of “Guy in Dubai” and “Guy in the Sky,” distributed on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, OSN, and Emirates Airlines across more than 120 countries Founder of Blazing Sand Studios (formerly GID Media Production), an Abu Dhabi-based production company established in 2017 Regular contributor to Dubai Eye radio; business columnist for The National MA (Hons), Business Studies (Finance), University of Edinburgh; earlier career in investment banking and private equity Biography Most organisations discover they have a resilience problem not during planning but when things go wrong. A skilled, well-resourced team will perform competently under normal conditions. Whether that same team can sustain judgement, cohesion, and output when conditions break down is a different question: and one that most leadership development programmes never directly test. Paris Norriss has spent a decade answering it under conditions where the cost of failure was not theoretical. In 2023 he rowed 4,800 kilometres across the Pacific Ocean with the Brothers N Oars team over 39 days: navigating two storms, 40-foot waves, and a near-collision with a cargo ship. In 2025, having previously run a single marathon, he completed the World Marathon Challenge across seven continents in 5 days and 21 hours. The experiences are not the argument. The argument is what they required: a decision-making framework that holds when resources, morale, and conditions are all working against you. The Grit Code is that framework. Structured from both Paris’s own extreme experiences and interviews with more than 50 high performers, it gives organisations a repeatable method for developing the mental durability that sustains performance under real pressure. Paris has applied it across audiences spanning the US Military, DHL, Nokia, and COP28; contexts with little in common except the fundamental challenge of keeping a team functional when nothing is going to plan. His parallel career as founder of Blazing Sand Studios and executive producer of “Guy in Dubai” and “Guy in the Sky”, distributed on Amazon Prime and Apple TV across more than 120 countries, separates him from other speakers working in the same space. He has not merely survived extreme experiences; he has spent a career converting them into narrative form for mass audiences. That capacity to distil high-stakes experience into something transferable and usable is precisely what The Grit Code delivers in an organisational setting. Key speaking topics Mental resilience and performance under pressure Team cohesion in high-stakes environments Leadership in adversity Decision-making under stress The Grit Code framework for building organisational resilience Visual storytelling and narrative in business Adventure filmmaking and destination media Ideal for Leadership and senior management teams preparing for high-pressure transformation, restructuring, or sustained competitive pressure Sales, operations, and commercial teams where consistent output under difficult conditions is a performance priority HR and L&D leaders looking to embed resilience as a systemic organisational capability rather than a wellbeing initiative Conference organisers serving Gulf, Middle East, and international markets seeking a speaker with verified regional credibility and global media distribution Audience outcomes A working definition of grit as a learnable, structured capability – not a fixed personality trait Practical tools for identifying the internal motivational triggers that determine how individuals perform under sustained adversity A clear framework for distinguishing teams that hold under pressure from teams that only perform when conditions are favourable Insight into the mechanics of leadership and decision-making during the specific period when resources, morale, and conditions are all depleted simultaneously Understanding of how internal purpose and motivational alignment sustain team output beyond the point where conventional incentives and management techniques lose traction

Why organisations work with Jose Manuel Calderon Fourteen NBA seasons across seven franchises, each requiring a different role, system, and relationship with coaching staff. Few speakers can describe reinvention at that frequency from inside the experience. Captained the Spain national team through its most decorated era, winning the 2006 FIBA World Cup, the 2011 EuroBasket, and three Olympic medals across 2008, 2012, and 2016. Holds the NBA single-season free throw record at 98.05 percent. The story behind that statistic is a precise account of preparation, repetition, and composure that translates directly to high-stakes performance. Now operates inside the business of sport as Special Advisor to the Cleveland Cavaliers, strategic advisor to technology firm Sngular, and co-founder of sport technology venture OWQLO. The post-playing view is operational, not nostalgic. Biography highlights 14 NBA seasons with Toronto Raptors, Detroit Pistons, Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers, Atlanta Hawks, and Cleveland Cavaliers. NBA single-season free throw record holder at 98.05 percent (2008-09, Toronto Raptors). 2006 FIBA World Cup champion and 2011 EuroBasket champion with Spain. Three Olympic medals with Spain: silver in 2008, silver in 2012, bronze in 2016. Special Assistant to the Executive Director at the National Basketball Players Association from 2019. Special Advisor to the Cleveland Cavaliers, strategic advisor to Sngular, co-founder of OWQLO, UNICEF Ambassador. Biography Fourteen seasons in the NBA is not a tenure. It is seven different working environments, seven coaching philosophies, and a constant negotiation of role. Across Toronto, Detroit, Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Cleveland, the work was the same every season: arrive, read the room, and become useful to a group of people who did not pick you. That career line is the substance behind Jose Manuel Calderon’s speaking. He captained the Spain national team through the most decorated period in its history, winning the 2006 FIBA World Cup, the 2011 EuroBasket, and three Olympic medals across 2008, 2012, and 2016. The Spanish “golden generation” is studied because it sustained excellence across more than a decade, with changing coaches, ageing key players, and rising rivals. Calderon was a central figure in how that group held together. The detail that travels well into corporate rooms is his free throw record. In 2008-09 he made 151 of 154 attempts, a 98.05 percent season that still stands as the NBA’s highest. The talk that emerges from it is about repeatable performance, not natural talent, and it lands cleanly with audiences who are measured on consistency rather than peaks. After retiring, Calderon moved directly into the business of sport. He served as Special Assistant to the Executive Director of the NBA Players Association from 2019, advises the Cleveland Cavaliers, sits on the advisory board of Spanish technology firm Sngular, and co-founded sport technology venture OWQLO. He is also a UNICEF Ambassador. The result is a speaker who can speak to senior teams in the language they use, drawing on a playing career that is genuinely rare at the level it reached. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained pressure Team performance across changing line-ups High-stakes decision-making Captaincy and standards Inclusion and identity in elite sport Reinvention across cultures and systems The business of professional sport Ideal for Senior leadership teams under prolonged performance pressure CHROs and people leaders building cohesion across changing structures Sales and commercial leaders who manage on consistency rather than peaks Board and executive offsites looking for a credible outside voice on team dynamics Audience outcomes A practical account of how elite teams hold standards through line-up change, coaching turnover, and external scrutiny. A clear picture of what daily preparation looks like at the level that produces records, not anecdotes about motivation. A working language for captaincy, the responsibility of senior players inside a team, and how that maps to senior leaders inside an organisation. A perspective on inclusion built from a long career across multiple national, cultural, and locker-room contexts.