Resilience & Stress Management speakers

Why organisations work with Elizabeth Day A single, named thesis built over hundreds of long-form interviews on How to Fail, applied to the specific cultural problem of how teams talk about setbacks. Journalistic credibility from a decade at The Observer and a Young Journalist of the Year award, which gives her the interviewing range to draw substance out of senior internal speakers and panel guests. Literary authority confirmed by a Royal Society of Literature fellowship and a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller, which lifts her above the standard wellbeing-speaker field. A direct corporate track record with Google, Facebook, HSBC, JP Morgan, Netflix and Barclays, so the material has been tested on senior commercial audiences. Equally strong as keynote, fireside interviewer, or awards host, which makes her useful for events that need one trusted voice across multiple formats. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, elected 2024. Host and creator of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, with guests including Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Kate Winslet, Malcolm Gladwell and Gloria Steinem. Winner, Rising Star Award, British Podcast Awards 2019. Winner, Young Journalist of the Year, British Press Awards 2004; Highly Commended Feature Writer, 2012. Author of How to Fail, Failosophy, Friendaholic and Magpie, with Friendaholic entering the Sunday Times charts at No. 1. Host of BBC Radio 4’s Open Book since 2021; co-host of Sky Arts Book Club Live. Biography Most workplaces still treat failure as an event to be hidden. Elizabeth Day has spent years arguing, in print and on air, that the more useful question is what setbacks teach the people who admit to them. How to Fail, the podcast she launched in 2018, has built that argument into one of the most listened-to interview shows in the UK. Her credibility for the topic is not motivational. It is journalistic. She trained on the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary, moved to The Sunday Telegraph as a news reporter, and won Young Journalist of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. From 2007 to 2016 she was a feature writer at The Observer, picking up a commendation in the Feature Writer category at the 2012 Press Awards. The literary record sits alongside the broadcasting one. Her novel Scissors Paper Stone won the Betty Trask Award; The Party became a Richard and Judy Book Club pick; Friendaholic entered the Sunday Times charts at No. 1. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024 and hosts BBC Radio 4’s Open Book. For corporate audiences, the value is the translation. Google, Facebook, HSBC, JP Morgan, Netflix and Barclays have booked her to put failure, friendship and candour onto the table as workplace concerns rather than personal anecdotes. The interviews have produced a working vocabulary that senior teams can actually use when something goes wrong. Key speaking topics Failure as a method for learning and recovery Workplace candour and psychological safety Storytelling and interview craft for senior leaders Friendship, connection and the social fabric of teams Vulnerability as a professional capability Resilience after setback Women, work and visibility Ideal for CHROs and people leaders rebuilding engagement and trust after restructure or underperformance. Communications and internal events teams looking for a host who can interview senior leaders on the record without flattening them. Leadership development programmes for high-potential cohorts working on candour, feedback and self-awareness. Awards evenings and flagship conferences that need one credible voice across keynote, panel and host roles. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for naming and discussing setbacks at work without defensiveness. Specific, repeatable interview and conversation techniques drawn from years of long-form journalism. A clearer view of how candour and vulnerability function as team capabilities, not personality traits. Permission, modelled from named public figures, to treat early-career mistakes as data rather than damage.

Why organisations work with Elle Mace Her clinical stack is unusually deep for a workplace wellbeing speaker: Master Practitioner via the National Centre for Eating Disorders, ICF accredited NLP Practitioner, Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist, Level 4 CBT and ILM Level 5 Coach and Mentor. Food Freedom, published by Vermilion in August 2026, gives audiences a named, citable framework on food, body image and the rise of GLP-1 weight loss medications, a topic most wellbeing programmes are not yet equipped to discuss. She runs her own clinic and two CPD-accredited training courses for practitioners, so the workplace material is grounded in active clinical caseload rather than recycled keynote content. Her recovery from 17 years of eating disorders and body dysmorphia gives the room a level of trust and disclosure that pure clinicians rarely achieve, without sliding into testimonial territory. As Executive Partner at Strategic Wellbeing, she works inside an operating consultancy, which means her keynote sits alongside follow-on training and 1:1 support rather than ending at the stage. Biography highlights Author of Food Freedom, Vermilion (Penguin Random House UK), August 2026 Master Practitioner in eating disorders, obesity and nutrition, National Centre for Eating Disorders ICF accredited NLP Practitioner, Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist, Level 4 CBT, ILM Level 5 Coach and Mentor Executive Partner at Strategic Wellbeing Founder of her own clinic, with two CPD-accredited training courses for practitioners Host of the More to Life podcast on food, body and growth Biography Workplace wellbeing strategy still defaults to perks and posters when the harder issues sit further down: how people relate to food, to their bodies and to their own self-worth. Those issues quietly drive absence, presenteeism and burnout, and they rarely show up in engagement data. Elle Mace works at that level, where most wellbeing programmes do not reach. Her credentials are built for it. She trained as a Master Practitioner in eating disorders, obesity and nutrition through the National Centre for Eating Disorders, and holds qualifications as an ICF accredited NLP Practitioner, a Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist, a Level 4 CBT practitioner and an ILM Level 5 Coach and Mentor. She runs her own clinic, hosts international retreats and has built two CPD-accredited training courses for other practitioners. Food Freedom, published by Vermilion, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK, in August 2026, codifies the argument. It pairs positive psychology and cognitive behavioural tools with a direct reading of diet culture and the new wave of GLP-1 weight loss medications now entering the wellbeing conversation. As Executive Partner at Strategic Wellbeing, she takes that material into corporate environments through keynotes, workshops and training. The lived backbone is 17 years of recovery from eating disorders and body dysmorphia. That experience is what allows her to talk about self-worth, body image and disordered eating in front of a corporate audience without losing either clinical authority or the room. Key speaking topics Psychology of food, body image and self-worth at work Eating disorders, disordered eating and body dysmorphia Workplace wellbeing and mental health Burnout, stress and resilience Positive psychology for performance Self-doubt, self-worth and imposter syndrome Mindful leadership and the mind-body connection Ideal for CHROs, wellbeing leads and EAP commissioners designing the next layer of mental health strategy HR directors and DEI leads addressing body image, self-worth and gendered wellbeing concerns Leadership teams in high-pressure sectors where burnout, food and body issues are showing up in engagement data Internal employee networks, ERGs and Mental Health Awareness Week or Wellbeing Week programmes Audience outcomes A clearer view of how food, body image and self-worth feed into workplace stress, presenteeism and burnout Practical positive psychology and cognitive behavioural tools employees can use without clinical supervision Confident vocabulary for line managers and HR on disordered eating, body dysmorphia and weight stigma Reference points from Food Freedom and her CPD-accredited training for follow-on organisational work A safer, more honest conversation in the room about issues most employees do not raise at work

Why organisations work with Ellie Simmonds She speaks to inclusion from inside the experience, not from a research deck. Teams hear what belonging actually requires, from someone whose career was built in environments that were not designed for her. Her documentary work, including the BAFTA-winning “Finding My Secret Family”, gives her a vocabulary for difficult conversations about disability, identity and adoption that most speakers do not have. She brings elite high-performance credibility alongside the inclusion content. Audiences get eight Paralympic medals and the discipline behind them, without the detachment of a pure sports keynote. She is a working BBC Sport broadcaster, so she handles panels, Q and A and hosting at a professional standard, not as a one-off favour. Biography highlights Five Paralympic gold medals across Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Rio 2016; eight Paralympic medals in total across four Games Appointed MBE in 2009 aged 14, the youngest recipient of the honour at the time; promoted to OBE in 2013 for services to Paralympic sport BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year, 2008 Subject and presenter of “Ellie Simmonds: Finding My Secret Family” (ITV, 2023), winner of the BAFTA for Single Documentary, 2024 First contestant with dwarfism on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, series 20, 2022 Broadcaster for BBC Sport, including Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and Paris 2024 Paralympics Biography At thirteen, Simmonds was the youngest British athlete at the Beijing 2008 Paralympics and left with two gold medals. The story could have ended as a prodigy footnote. Instead it became the first chapter of a fifteen-year career across four Paralympic Games, eight medals, and a public role that has stretched well beyond the pool. What made her visible beyond sport was the clarity with which she has always spoken about living with achondroplasia. The discipline that produced the medals is the same discipline she brings to conversations about difference, adoption and what inclusion actually asks of institutions. Her 2023 ITV documentary “Finding My Secret Family” followed her search for her birth mother and surfaced the historical attitudes to disability that shaped that adoption. It won the BAFTA for Single Documentary in 2024. She retired from competition after Tokyo 2020 and has built a second career as a broadcaster with BBC Sport, including coverage of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and the Paris 2024 Paralympics. She was the first contestant with dwarfism on Strictly Come Dancing in 2022, a piece of visibility she treated with the same seriousness as her racing. For corporate audiences, the value is specific. She offers a first-person account of what inclusion feels like when it works and when it does not, backed by the credibility of an elite career and the communication range of a working broadcaster. Key speaking topics Disability inclusion and belonging in the workplace High-performance mindset and sustained excellence Resilience under public scrutiny Adoption, identity and family Representation in sport and media Managing transition out of an elite career Ideal for Chief People Officers and DEI leads building inclusion programmes that need more than policy language Employee resource groups focused on disability, neurodiversity or family and adoption Leadership development audiences looking at performance over a long career Organisations marking International Day of Persons with Disabilities, International Women’s Day or similar moments with substance Audience outcomes A first-person account of what daily inclusion requires, from someone who has navigated it in elite and public settings A clearer sense of how high performance is sustained across a decade and a half, and what falls away when it ends A vocabulary for talking about disability and difference at work without defaulting to either discomfort or platitude Language for leaders on representation that goes beyond visibility metrics

Why organisations work with Emil Dobrovolschi He is a working airline captain and EASA-certified examiner, so the discipline he teaches around briefings, checklists and crew coordination is the discipline he is held to in the cockpit. Co-author of Dark Cockpit with Octavian Pantis, a published thesis that gives leaders a shared vocabulary for a calm, fully functioning operating state and the behaviours that produce it. Three decades inside a national flag carrier, including time as Director of Flight Operations, give him a frank view of what command, accountability and quiet discipline look like in a regulated organisation. The pilots he has trained as a Type Rating Instructor have gone on to fly as captains for at least twelve international airlines, evidence that his teaching method travels and holds up under examination. The aviation material is concrete. Audiences leave with named behaviours, not metaphors: how a brief is structured, how a challenge is raised, how a captain hands over control. Biography highlights Captain, instructor and examiner at TAROM since 1994, across Antonov 24, ATR 42/72, Airbus A320 and A310. Former Vice President and Director of Flight Operations, TAROM. EASA-certified Type Rating Examiner; Type Rating Instructor since 2001. Commander of special flights for the Romanian President and government officials. Co-author of Dark Cockpit: How to Communicate, Lead, and Be in Control at All Times Like an Airline Captain (with Octavian Pantis). TEDx speaker (TEDxBaiaMare, “Gata de decolare”). Biography A commercial flight deck is one of the few corporate settings where bad communication is logged, debriefed and corrected by regulation. Aviation does not assume good leaders happen. It produces them through briefings, checklists, standard calls and a regulated training cycle. Emil Dobrovolschi has spent his career inside that system. He joined TAROM, the Romanian flag carrier, in 1994 and worked through every rank from Antonov 24 co-pilot to Airbus A320 and A310 captain, instructor and examiner. As a Type Rating Instructor since 2001 and an EASA-certified examiner, he has trained pilots who now hold left-seat command at twelve or more international carriers. Inside TAROM he served as Vice President and Director of Flight Operations, and as commander of special flights for the Romanian President and government officials. The corporate work grew out of that. With consultant and author Octavian Pantis he co-wrote Dark Cockpit: How to Communicate, Lead, and Be in Control at All Times Like an Airline Captain. The dark cockpit is the aviation term for the state in which no caution lights are on, the aircraft is functioning, and the crew can do its job. The book translates that into a leadership thesis: the conditions for clarity, command and trust are designed in, not improvised when something goes wrong. In keynotes, that translation is concrete. He shows how a captain runs a pre-flight brief, how a junior officer is trained to challenge a senior one, and what changes when control is formally handed over. Senior teams use the material to look at their own briefings, escalation paths and quiet failures of communication. The authority behind it is straightforward: he is still the captain in the room. Key speaking topics Leadership and command in high-stakes environments Communication and crew resource management Decision-making under pressure Teamwork, hierarchy and the freedom to speak up Crisis management and recovery Building professional standards inside an operating culture Ideal for Executive teams and boards reviewing how decisions are taken when the situation tightens CHROs and leadership development leads designing programmes for newly senior managers Operations, safety and risk leaders in regulated industries (energy, healthcare, financial services, transport) Corporate offsites and leadership weeks looking for an external voice with operational credibility, not consulting language Audience outcomes A vocabulary borrowed from the cockpit (brief, checklist, challenge, handover) that makes everyday leadership behaviours explicit. A clearer view of where their own organisation tolerates ambiguous communication that aviation would not. Specific practices for raising a concern up a hierarchy and for receiving one. A working definition of composure under pressure as a trained behaviour, not a personality trait. A frame for distinguishing routine operations from genuine crisis, and for behaving differently in each.

Why organisations work with Emma Hayes She has built two elite teams from different starting points: a Chelsea side she took from mid-table to seven Women’s Super League titles, and a US national team she led to Olympic gold within ten matches of taking charge. Her leadership thesis is published and tested. A Completely Different Game sets out a working method built around team, staff and standards, not personality. She speaks from a current operational seat, not a retired one. Buyers get a working head coach describing live decisions under pressure, not retrospective career narrative. Named The Best FIFA Women’s Coach (2021) and winner of the inaugural Johan Cruyff Trophy (2024); the formal recognition tracks the operational record. She is fluent in the language of senior business audiences from regular broadcast and conference work, including Sky and BBC punditry and the Leaders in Sport platform. Biography highlights Head Coach, United States Women’s National Team, 2024 to present. Manager, Chelsea FC Women, 2012 to 2024; seven WSL titles, five FA Cups, five domestic doubles. Olympic gold medal with the USWNT, Paris 2024. The Best FIFA Women’s Coach, 2021; inaugural Johan Cruyff Trophy, 2024. OBE (2022) and MBE (2016) for services to football. Author, A Completely Different Game: My Leadership Playbook (2024), expanded from the Audible Original Kill the Unicorn. Biography Chelsea FC Women were a mid-table side in 2012. By the time Emma Hayes left in 2024, they had won seven Women’s Super League titles, including five in a row, alongside five FA Cups and multiple League Cups. The rebuild was not the result of a single tactical idea. It was the product of how she organised the staff around her, the standards she held, and the way she handled players, ownership and scrutiny over twelve seasons. The work translated directly. Appointed Head Coach of the United States Women’s National Team in 2024, she led the side to Olympic gold in Paris in her tenth match in charge, winning every knockout game 1-0. The body of evidence sits across two contexts, club and country, with very different constraints. The leadership method travelled. Her book, A Completely Different Game: My Leadership Playbook, sets out the underlying argument. Published in 2024 as the print expansion of the Audible Original Kill the Unicorn, written with Michael Calvin, it dismantles the idea of the lone great leader. Sustained performance, she argues, is built by the staff around the leader and the culture the leader is willing to enforce. The book is grounded in operational practice, not theory. Formal recognition has followed the record. She was named The Best FIFA Women’s Coach in 2021, won the inaugural Johan Cruyff Trophy for the best women’s coach in the world in 2024, and was appointed OBE in 2022 after an MBE in 2016. She continues to coach at the top of the international game, which is what gives her speaking work its weight: the material is live, not retrospective. Key speaking topics Building high-performance teams Leadership through sustained change Culture and standards in elite organisations Decision-making under pressure Women in leadership Coaching as a leadership discipline Ideal for CEOs, COOs and executive teams rebuilding performance after underperformance or restructure CHROs and chief people officers working on leadership development and high-performance culture Boards and senior leadership offsites focused on standards, accountability and team design Audience outcomes A working model for how senior leaders set and hold standards through cycles of pressure A clear view of how culture is built deliberately, not absorbed by accident Concrete examples of decisions made under scrutiny, with the trade-offs named A reframing of leadership away from individual heroics towards staff, team and system design

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

Why organisations work with Emma Willis Two decades of live presenting across every major UK broadcaster, plus Netflix, develops a capacity to read a room under pressure and adapt in real time that most available hosts simply do not have. That composure is the product. Her six-series run on Big Brother (2013-2018) required managing emotionally unpredictable situations live, on camera, with no preparation time. Her skill set (firm pacing, genuine empathy, zero visible panic) is directly transferable to panel discussions, live Q&As, or award presentations that do not go to plan. The W Channel’s “Delivering Babies,” for which she trained and qualified as a Maternity Care Assistant, won the Broadcast Digital Award for Best Popular Factual for three consecutive years. It is evidence that when she commits to a subject, the result is award-winning rather than merely competent. Her appointment to BBC Radio 2’s Saturday lunchtime slot from January 2026, taking over from Zoe Ball, reflects the institutional trust that comes with consistently delivering at the highest level of British broadcasting, a validation that is straightforward for senior buyers to cite. As a Prince’s Trust ambassador, she brings an existing, public relationship with purpose-driven work to occasions where charitable giving or social commitments are part of the event’s agenda. Biography highlights Broadcast presenter since 2002; major credits across the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, and Netflix Main host of Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother, Channel 5 (2013-2018) Presenter of The Voice UK (2014-present), initially BBC One then ITV; also hosted The Voice Kids UK Co-host of Love Is Blind: UK alongside Matt Willis, Netflix (2024) BBC Radio 2 Saturday lunchtime presenter from January 2026 Broadcast Digital Award for Best Popular Factual, three consecutive years (Delivering Babies, W Channel) Prince’s Trust ambassador Former fashion model; campaigns for Gap, Chanel, and Samsung; editorial work for Marie Claire, Elle, and Vogue Biography Live occasions are unforgiving. A host who is technically capable but emotionally disconnected leaves the room cold; one who is warm but underprepared leaves it chaotic. Emma Willis has spent more than two decades navigating both risks: across reality television, talent competitions, factual documentary, entertainment, and radio, formats as different from each other as any two occasions a programme director might need to anchor. Her television career began at MTV in 2002 and expanded through Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother (Channel 5, 2013-2018), The Voice UK (BBC One then ITV, 2014-present), The Circle (Channel 4), and Love Is Blind: UK (Netflix, 2024, with her husband Matt Willis). Each format demanded a different register: firm management of contestants under pressure, warmth with young singers, curiosity about social dynamics, empathy in emotionally complex moments. The consistency across all of them is not a personality trait, it is a professional discipline. In 2019, Willis trained and qualified as a Maternity Care Assistant for the W Channel’s “Delivering Babies” series, working real shifts in a real maternity ward, not observing as a celebrity. The series won the Broadcast Digital Award for Best Popular Factual for three consecutive years. The project illustrated something her broadcast career had long implied: a genuine capacity to be present on the subject’s terms, not her own. From January 2026, she presents BBC Radio 2’s Saturday lunchtime slot, one of the most scrutinised appointments in British broadcasting. She is a Prince’s Trust ambassador. Her early career as a fashion model, with campaigns for Gap, Chanel, and Samsung and editorial work for Marie Claire, Elle, and Vogue gives her a credible platform to speak on fashion, personal style, and media at occasions where those subjects are part of the agenda. Key speaking topics Live broadcast presenting and audience connection Fashion, personal style, and public image Resilience and personal reinvention Authenticity in public and professional life Charitable work and purpose-driven engagement Career development and life transitions Ideal for Awards ceremonies, gala dinners, and internal celebration events Brand launches and consumer-facing occasions Charity fundraisers and purpose-led events Fashion, lifestyle, and consumer industry conferences Audience outcomes An occasion that is paced, emotionally responsive, and memorable rather than merely completed A sense that the room was hosted for the people in it, not managed at them Consistent energy and composure across a full live programme, including unscripted moments Confidence in the platform from the moment the event begins Where relevant, personal insight on resilience, authenticity, and life in the public eye that participants can apply beyond the occasion itself

Why organisations work with Erik Weihenmayer A first-hand operating model for making decisions without full visibility, drawn from summiting Everest and kayaking 277 miles of Grand Canyon whitewater rather than from theory A tested argument about rope-team leadership: how trust, role clarity, and communication protocols hold a team together when one member’s judgement has to carry the rest A named framework, the No Barriers Life, backed by a published book and a working nonprofit, not a single keynote built around a single mountain Credibility with audiences who have heard every generic resilience talk, because the proof points are specific, verifiable, and unusual: Everest, the Eight Summits, Leadville 100 on a tandem, Colorado River source to sea Biography highlights First blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, May 25, 2001; featured on the cover of Time magazine that June Completed the Seven Summits in 2002 and the Eight Summits in 2008 with Carstensz Pyramid Kayaked the full 277 miles of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River in 2014 Co-founder of No Barriers USA, serving people with disabilities, veterans, youth, and caregivers Author of “Touch the Top of the World,” published in 9 languages, and co-author of “No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon” with Buddy Levy Recipient of an ESPY Award, Nike’s Casey Martin Award, and the Helen Keller Lifetime Achievement Award Biography The path down Everest is more dangerous than the path up. On the descent in May 2001, Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind climber to summit the mountain, was moving on a rope team whose margin for error had effectively closed. The instruction he had been given by expedition leader Pasquale Scaturro on the way home set the next two decades of his work: do not let Everest be the greatest thing you ever do. What followed was not a sequence of stunts. It was the construction of an argument about how teams operate when the environment does not cooperate. The Seven Summits by 2002, Carstensz Pyramid in 2008, the Leadville 100 mountain bike race on a tandem in 2010, and in 2014 the full 277-mile kayak descent of the Grand Canyon with blinded Navy veteran Lonnie Bedwell. Each expedition is a case study in role assignment, communication discipline, and trust allocation under degraded information. The intellectual output sits alongside the physical one. “Touch the Top of the World” was published in twelve countries and nine languages and became the basis of a documentary that won first prize at 21 international film festivals. “No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon,” co-written with Buddy Levy, took an Honorable Mention at the 2017 National Outdoor Book Awards and a 2018 Colorado Book Awards finalist spot. “The Adversity Advantage,” co-written with Paul Stoltz, moves the same material into an explicit business register. In 2005, Weihenmayer co-founded No Barriers USA, a nonprofit that now works with veterans, youth, people with disabilities, and full-time caregivers. It is where the speaking work connects back to a working practice: the No Barriers Life is not a slogan, it is the operating code the organisation teaches and the argument the book defends. Key speaking topics Decision-making under incomplete information Rope-team leadership and trust allocation The No Barriers Life as an organisational operating code Resilience as a team discipline, not an individual trait Innovation and problem-solving under constraint Inclusive leadership and diverse-ability teams Navigating reinvention after a defining achievement Ideal for Executive teams preparing for high-stakes decisions where the data will not be complete in time CHROs and culture leads building resilience and belonging into the organisational operating model, not bolting it on Leadership offsites for transformation, integration, or turnaround programmes Veteran-heavy, disability-community, or inclusion-focused audiences where lived authority matters Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for how to lead a mixed-ability, mixed-experience team through a decision with partial information Named protocols from expedition practice that transfer directly into executive decision rooms A sharper sense of the difference between individual grit and team discipline, and why resilience only compounds when it is built into the team Permission to treat constraint as a design input rather than a deficit A concrete reference point, the No Barriers Life, that leaders can carry back into their own language

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

Why organisations work with Farah Nanji A working framework for high-pressure performance built from a decade inside Formula 1 culture and a decade as the touring artist NINJA, two domains where small lapses are publicly visible. A founder’s view of building a private leadership community, Regents Racing, that uses motorsport psychology as a development tool for executives and members. A rare first-person account of rewiring cognitive function around dyspraxia, delivered as a TEDx keynote at the Luxembourg Philharmonie and translated into practical lessons on neurodivergence at work. A reference network drawn from Mission Makers, the podcast she founded at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which has hosted leaders across music, motorsport and business. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Regents Racing, a private leadership community using motorsport psychology, with roots at Regent’s University London. CEO of The Formula Mind, Regents Racing’s executive-facing subsidiary exploring Formula 1 as a lens for leadership and peak performance. TEDx speaker at TEDxLuxembourgCity, 2019, delivered at the Luxembourg Philharmonie. Producer and host of Mission Makers, a podcast launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Lecturer at Regent’s University London and Point Blank Music School. Performing artist as NINJA, with sets at Pacha Ibiza, Buddha Bar, Goodwood Festival of Speed, the United Nations in London and the World Economic Forum. Biography Formula 1 teams treat composure as an engineered system. Sleep, nutrition, debrief routines and pre-race protocols are sequenced so that the driver can make sound decisions when the cost of a wrong one is highest. Regents Racing was built to translate that discipline into a leadership setting, taking senior executives and members through experiences that pressure-test how they prepare, recover and decide. The organisation began in 2011 at Regent’s University London as a community of competitive drivers and has grown into a private network with programming around Formula 1 weekends in Monaco, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, the Goodwood Festival of Speed and factory tours. Its executive-facing subsidiary, The Formula Mind, sits closer to senior leadership development. A second strand of the work comes from a personal record. Diagnosed with dyspraxia at 15, Nanji built a parallel career as the touring artist NINJA, with sets at Pacha Ibiza, Buddha Bar, the United Nations in London and the World Economic Forum. Her TEDx talk at the Luxembourg Philharmonie in 2019 set out how she rewired cognitive function around the condition, and that account is now a core part of her keynote work on neurodivergence and resilience. The third strand is Mission Makers, the podcast she launched during the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020. The show has interviewed leaders across music, motorsport and business, and it doubles as her research engine: the conversations feed the frameworks she brings into the room when she speaks. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under pressure Formula 1 psychology and peak performance Resilience and self-leadership Neurodivergence and dyspraxia at work High-performance teams Entrepreneurship and founding a community-based business Music, creativity and performance discipline Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and executive development programmes focused on composure and decision-making under pressure Boards and ExCo audiences exploring high-performance culture DEI, talent and HR audiences working on neurodivergence and inclusive performance Conferences seeking a hybrid keynote and live performance from a single artist Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for what high-performance preparation, recovery and debrief actually look like in Formula 1, and where the parallels to executive work hold A first-person account of building cognitive routines around dyspraxia, with direct application for neurodivergent talent in the workforce A clearer sense of how leaders sustain composure when the margin for error is thin A founder’s perspective on building a private community business that crosses motorsport, music and leadership

Why organisations work with Farrah Storr She has repositioned three major consumer media brands through structural decline in print and can speak with evidence about what actually protects audience, authority, and commercial performance when the category is shrinking. She launched Women’s Health UK from a three-person team with minimal budget into what industry records call the most successful women’s magazine launch of the century, a concrete case of building inside a constraint. She crossed from legacy publishing to Substack and now runs its international writer business, so she has operator experience on both sides of the media disruption that most leaders only read about. Her book The Discomfort Zone and the BMD method give her a published leadership argument on how individuals and teams perform in conditions most organisations try to engineer away. Her MBE for services to Media and Diversity, her Social Mobility Commissioner role and her National Theatre board seat give her a public record on social mobility and diversity in creative industries that goes beyond corporate talking points. Biography highlights Head of Substack International, previously Head of Writer Partnerships at Substack UK. Editor-in-Chief, ELLE UK, 2019 to 2021. Editor-in-Chief, Cosmopolitan UK, 2015 to 2019, where the title became the UK’s number-one women’s glossy. Launch Editor-in-Chief, Women’s Health UK, from 2012. MBE, 2024 King’s Birthday Honours, for services to Media and Diversity. Commissioner, Social Mobility Commission, from 2018; Board Member, National Theatre, from 2021. Author, The Discomfort Zone: How to Get What You Want by Living Fearlessly, Piatkus, 2018. BSME Editor of the Year 2012, 2018, 2020; PPA Editor of the Year 2018, 2019. TEDxExeter speaker, 2018, “The Discomfort Zone”. Biography Women’s Health UK was a three-person team with almost no budget when Farrah Storr launched it in 2012. By industry count it became the most successful women’s magazine launch of the century, and the pattern repeated at the titles that followed. Cosmopolitan UK, where she was Editor-in-Chief from 2015, became the country’s number-one women’s glossy inside her tenure. In 2019 she moved to ELLE UK to do a similar job on the luxury end of the same portfolio. Her argument as an operator is that consumer brands hold their authority through hard editorial judgement under constraint, not through more budget. That case is easier to make now because she has left the category she was running. In 2021 she joined Substack as the first Head of Writer Partnerships in the UK, building the writer base that anchors the platform in this market, and has since stepped up to lead Substack International. That arc, from print consumer titles into the paid newsletter platform that is reshaping them, is unusually clean. It gives her a credible view on what moves with a writer, what stays with a brand, and what the economics of direct subscription actually demand from a team. Her book The Discomfort Zone, published by Piatkus in 2018, sets out the BMD method, her shorthand for Brief Moments of Discomfort as a training discipline for individuals and teams. It is read alongside the public work: her 2018 appointment as a Commissioner on the Social Mobility Commission, her 2021 appointment to the board of the National Theatre, and the 2024 MBE for services to Media and Diversity. Key speaking topics Brand reinvention in consumer media Leading through structural change and category decline Platform economics and the paid newsletter shift The Discomfort Zone and the BMD method Social mobility and diversity in creative industries Women in leadership Editorial judgement as commercial discipline Ideal for CMOs, editorial leaders and heads of content in consumer brands, publishing, and media CEOs and executive teams running heritage brands through audience and format change CHROs and leadership programmes focused on leading in constrained, shrinking or contested categories Networks and conferences on women’s leadership, social mobility and diversity in creative industries Audience outcomes A named operator’s read on what actually protects brand authority when a category is contracting. A working view of the paid newsletter shift from the inside of the platform now reshaping consumer media. A concrete account of launching and repositioning brands on small teams and tight budgets. A usable leadership argument from the Discomfort Zone on how people and teams perform in uncomfortable conditions. A credible perspective on social mobility and diversity in the creative industries, grounded in public roles and personal record.

Why organisations work with Fleur East A working national breakfast presenter on Hits Radio since 2019, on air four hours a morning, five days a week. The reflexes for live radio carry directly into corporate stage moderation. Co-host of BBC Two’s Strictly: It Takes Two, where the format demands daily turnaround, guest interviewing, and managing emotional content on a tight clock. Reached the Strictly Come Dancing 2022 final with Vito Coppola and scored the series’ first perfect 40, a credibility line that lands instantly with mass-market UK audiences and partners. Co-founder with her sister of Kurl Kitchen, a textured-hair brand built on West African ingredients, launched in 2024. Useful when the brief includes founder stories, representation, or Black British entrepreneurship. Versatile in register, from awards night spectacle to panel moderation to after-dinner, without needing a different speaker for each format. Biography highlights Host of Hits Radio Breakfast (Bauer Media), nationally networked, since July 2019. Co-presenter of BBC Two’s Strictly: It Takes Two from the 2023 series. Strictly Come Dancing 2022 finalist with Vito Coppola; first perfect 40 of that series during Blackpool week. X Factor 2014 finalist; debut single “Sax” reached UK No. 3 and was certified Platinum by the BPI. Television credits including ITV’s Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, The Void, I’m A Celebrity finalist (2018), and Apple TV’s Ted Lasso. Co-founder with her sister Keshia East of Kurl Kitchen, a natural haircare brand launched in 2024. Biography Hits Radio Breakfast goes out from 6am every weekday to a national audience, and the host has to be functional from the first link. Fleur East has held that chair since 2019. Live radio at that hour, four hours at a stretch, is the closest training a presenter gets to running a corporate mainstage when the autocue fails. She came up through The X Factor in 2014, finishing as a finalist after her cover of “Uptown Funk” became the first contestant track to reach number one on the UK iTunes chart during a live series. Her debut single “Sax” hit number three on the Official Chart and went Platinum the following year. The music career gave her the stage instincts; the broadcasting career taught her the discipline. In 2022 she reached the final of Strictly Come Dancing with Vito Coppola, scoring the series’ first perfect 40 in the Blackpool week. The BBC brought her back as co-host of Strictly: It Takes Two from 2023, a daily live show that runs across the Strictly season and demands fast guest interviewing and tight format control. Other television credits include I’m A Celebrity, Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, ITV’s The Void, and a guest role in Apple TV’s Ted Lasso. Beyond presenting, she co-founded Kurl Kitchen with her sister Keshia in 2024, a textured-hair care brand grounded in West African ingredients. That gives her something to draw on when a brief calls for a founder story, a perspective on Black British entrepreneurship, or a host who can credibly talk to a CPG or beauty audience without being briefed in. Key speaking topics Live event hosting and awards presenting Conference moderation and stage interviewing Founder story: Kurl Kitchen and Black British entrepreneurship Representation in UK broadcast media Resilience and reinvention in a public career Women in entertainment and media Ideal for Awards nights and gala dinners requiring a recognisable national broadcaster on stage Corporate conferences needing a confident moderator across keynote interviews and panels Brand activations in beauty, CPG, retail, or media targeting UK and Black British audiences Internal events for HR, DEI, or talent leaders looking for a credible voice on representation in media Audience outcomes A live event held together by a host who keeps energy and pace through running-order changes Guest interviews that go beyond the prepared questions and land specific quotes the team can use afterwards A founder narrative grounded in a real, trading consumer brand rather than a generic entrepreneurship story A representation conversation that stays useful for an internal audience rather than slipping into platitudes