Resilience & Stress Management

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.

Why organisations work with Pau Gasol Two NBA championships, three Olympic medals and a FIBA World Cup title give him a working definition of high performance grounded in repeated wins across cultures, coaches and rosters, not a single peak. He speaks credibly about the operating reality of elite teams: ego management next to a generational star (Kobe Bryant), role clarity, and the unglamorous habits that hold a group together across an 82-game season. A Basketball Hall of Fame induction in 2023 and a retired Lakers jersey place him among the small group of athletes whose authority on team and leadership is taken seriously inside a boardroom, not only on a stage. His work outside sport (Gasol Foundation on childhood obesity, IOC Athletes’ Commission, Gasol16 Ventures) shows a leader who has built institutions, not only played in them. The J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award is the NBA’s formal recognition of that. He presents fluently in English and Spanish, with direct experience of US, European and global organisations, which suits international leadership audiences without translation overhead. Biography highlights Two NBA Championships with the Los Angeles Lakers (2009, 2010); six-time NBA All-Star; four-time All-NBA selection. 2002 NBA Rookie of the Year, the first non-American player to win the award. Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Class of 2023; jersey No. 16 retired by the Los Angeles Lakers. FIBA World Cup champion and MVP 2006; three EuroBasket golds with Spain (2009, 2011, 2015); two-time EuroBasket MVP. Three Olympic medals with Spain: silver in 2008 and 2012, bronze in 2016. President and co-founder of the Gasol Foundation; UNICEF Global Champion for Nutrition and Zero Childhood Obesity; member of the IOC Athletes’ Commission; 2012 NBA J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award. Biography Two NBA Championships, three Olympic medals and a FIBA World Cup title are not won by the same individual playing in different teams. They are won by leaders who help different groups behave the same way under pressure. Pau Gasol spent two decades inside the highest-stakes team environments in professional sport, with Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, alongside his brother Marc on the Spanish national team, and across rosters in Memphis, Chicago, San Antonio and Milwaukee. The interest for senior leaders is not the trophy count. It is what it took to sit beside a generational star like Bryant and still deliver, year after year, in the locker room as much as on the court. Role clarity, ego management, honest conversations between named individuals, and a standard that did not move with the score. Gasol’s account of that period is one of the more credible insider readings of elite team performance available from any speaker in the market. His record off the court is unusually substantive for an athlete. He co-founded the Gasol Foundation in 2013 with Marc Gasol, working on childhood obesity and child wellbeing in Spain and the United States. He serves as UNICEF’s Global Champion for Nutrition and Zero Childhood Obesity, sits on the International Olympic Committee Athletes’ Commission, and runs Gasol16 Ventures, an investment platform in sport, health and wellness. The NBA recognised the community work with the 2012 J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award. Inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2023, with his number retired by the Los Angeles Lakers the same year, Gasol now speaks to leadership audiences in English and Spanish on what it actually takes to build a team that wins more than once. Key speaking topics Leadership and team performance under sustained pressure Building trust and role clarity inside elite teams Resilience and self-leadership through injury, transition and setback Sport as a model for organisational culture and standards Purpose-driven leadership and life after a professional career Child health and the leadership case for long-term social investment Ideal for Senior leadership offsites and CEO conferences focused on team performance and culture Sales kick-offs and annual conferences seeking a credible voice on resilience and standards Sports, health and consumer-brand audiences engaging with athlete leadership International audiences requiring delivery in English or Spanish Audience outcomes A working picture of what elite team performance looks like behind the result, told by someone inside it A direct view of how leaders manage ego, role and trust around a dominant individual Specific reference points for resilience and decision-making through injury, transition and public scrutiny A leadership case for long-term investment in people and purpose beyond the immediate quarter

Why organisations work with Tom Bowen An eight-year international career in one of the most physically and selectively demanding squad environments in elite sport, drawn on for what it teaches about standards inside a small team. A first-hand account of being named Olympic reserve for Tokyo 2020 and not getting on the field, used to talk about preparation, selection, and disappointment in terms a senior team will recognise. Direct experience competing for England at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and the 2022 Rugby World Cup Sevens in Cape Town, alongside more than fifty World Rugby Sevens Series tournaments. A speaker pitched at the practical mechanics of teamwork and pressure, not a celebrity sports billing. Biography highlights Former England Sevens international made debut in October 2014 on the Gold Coast, Australia. Reserve in the Great Britain Rugby Sevens squad for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Selected for England at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and the 2022 Rugby World Cup Sevens in Cape Town. Joined Plymouth Albion in 2012 from Leicester Tigers; top try-scorer for Plymouth Albion in 2013-14 and twice the club’s young player of the season. More than 50 tournaments for England on the World Rugby Sevens Series; signed for Worthing RFC in 2022. Biography A reserve player at the Olympics trains the same hours as the squad, makes the same sacrifices, and watches the tournament from the side of the pitch. Bowen sat in that seat at Tokyo 2020. The talk that comes out of it is less about the moment and more about the years before it: the eight-season England Sevens cycle that put him there. His club path runs through Leicester Tigers and Plymouth Albion, where he switched from centre to wing, scored six tries in his first eighteen RFU Championship appearances, and was named the club’s young player of the season twice in succession. He became Plymouth’s top try-scorer in 2013-14 before the England Sevens debut in October 2014. The international record is the substance of the booking. Fifty-plus tournaments on the World Rugby Sevens Series, the GB Olympic squad in Tokyo, England, at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, and the Rugby World Cup Sevens in Cape Town the same year. Sevens is a short, high-density format where small mistakes are decisive; the lessons travel reasonably well into corporate teams that work in short cycles under scrutiny. What he brings to a room is a working account of how a small group sustains its standards over a long competitive arc, including the years that do not produce a medal. He signed for Worthing RFC in 2022 and continues to coach. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Team standards in elite sport Resilience after setback Selection, disappointment and recovery Teamwork in short-cycle, high-stakes environments Motivation and confidence Ideal for Sales and commercial leadership conferences focused on team performance and pressure Internal team away-days where leaders want a credible outside voice on standards and culture Early-career and high-potential audiences inside large organisations Audience outcomes A usable reference point for what disciplined, daily standards look like in an elite team environment A grounded view of what it means to prepare fully for an outcome that does not arrive Language for talking about pressure that goes beyond motivation and into specific habits Renewed focus on the role of small-team behaviours in larger organisational performance

Why organisations work with Tobias Lynes He works from one named behavioural model, the Tiny Habits® method developed at Stanford by BJ Fogg, rather than a buffet of wellbeing content. Audiences leave with a single mechanic they can apply on Monday. His content is built around the B=MAP equation, giving managers and HR teams a shared vocabulary for why wellbeing interventions fail when they target motivation alone. He frames fitness, nutrition, and energy as habit design problems for time-poor professionals, which lands better with sceptical corporate audiences than aspirational lifestyle messaging. He has run the coaching business he draws his material from since 2020, so the stories are first-hand client work, not borrowed case studies. Biography highlights Founder of 360Coaching, an online coaching business serving busy professionals. Tiny Habits® Certified Coach, trained in the methodology developed by BJ Fogg at the Stanford Behavior Design Lab. Works from the B=MAP model (Behaviour = Motivation, Ability, Prompt) as the core analytical frame for his keynotes. Personal training and coaching practitioner since 2015. Speaks at corporate wellbeing events, leadership offsites, and education settings, virtually and in person. Biography Most corporate wellbeing initiatives fail at the same point. People sign up in January, drift in February, and the programme quietly disappears by spring. The reason is not lack of motivation. It is that the behaviours being asked for are too large, too vague, or unhooked from anything already happening in the day. Tiny Habits, the method developed by BJ Fogg at the Stanford Behavior Design Lab, was built to fix exactly that problem. Its underlying equation, B=MAP, treats behaviour as the product of motivation, ability, and a clear prompt. When a habit does not stick, one of those three variables is wrong. Tobias Lynes is a certified coach in that method and uses it as the spine of his work with corporate audiences. He runs 360Coaching, the practice he founded in 2020 after several years as a personal trainer. The business focuses on busy professionals trying to manage body composition, energy, and nutrition inside a demanding work life. That client base shapes the keynote material: the failure modes he names are the ones HR teams already see, and the remedies are calibrated for people who cannot add another hour to their day. His commercial range is mid-market corporate wellbeing rather than senior leadership platforms. The value he gives audiences is narrow and specific. One framework, applied well, with a vocabulary leaders and managers can use after he leaves the room. Key speaking topics Habit formation and behaviour change in the workplace The Tiny Habits® method and the B=MAP model Sustainable approaches to employee health and wellbeing Energy, nutrition, and fitness habits for busy professionals Why corporate wellbeing programmes fail to stick Building resilience through small daily behaviours Ideal for HR, People, and wellbeing leads designing employee health initiatives Corporate wellbeing weeks, mental health awareness events, and team offsites Leadership groups looking for practical behavioural tools rather than aspirational content Education and early-career audiences building work-readiness habits Audience outcomes A working understanding of the B=MAP behavioural equation and how to apply it to a personal or team habit A method for designing a habit that is small enough to survive a bad week A frame for diagnosing why an existing wellbeing programme is failing A shared vocabulary HR and managers can use to talk about behaviour change after the session

Why organisations work with Tim Harris He speaks from inside the problem. Twenty-five years in commodities, ending as Global Head of Fuel Oil at PVM Oil Associates, gives him fluency with the pressures executive audiences actually face. He carries a formal coaching credential. ACC accreditation with the International Coaching Federation puts substance behind the lived experience. He has worked at the sharp end with organisations that test psychological content rigorously, including the Royal Marines, the Royal Navy, the NHS, Thames Valley Police and Google. The Atlantic row is more than a story. Fifty-two days at sea, 3,000 miles unassisted with one teammate, raising around £160,000 for teenage mental health, gives him a concrete reference point for talking about sustained pressure and recovery. He addresses suicide ideation directly. Few corporate speakers can hold that subject in front of a senior audience with honesty and without flinching. Biography highlights Twelve years as Global Head of Fuel Oil at PVM Oil Associates, capping a 25-year City career Completed the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge with Simon Calver, rowing 3,000 miles in 52 days Raised approximately £160,000 for teenage mental health charity through the row ICF Associate Certified Coach (ACC) Keynote and coaching clients include Google, the Royal Marines, the Royal Navy, the NHS, Thames Valley Police and The Times HMS Warrior keynote endorsed by Vice Admiral Martin Connell CBE as “a masterclass in self-awareness and resilience” Biography Burnout among senior performers rarely announces itself. It shows up as quiet resignations, eroded judgement and capable people stepping back from work they used to run. The organisations that take it seriously want speakers who can talk about it without the soft-focus vocabulary of the wellness industry. That is the space Tim Harris occupies. After 25 years in the City, the last twelve as Global Head of Fuel Oil at PVM Oil Associates, he left the industry having lived through severe depression and suicide ideation under sustained corporate pressure. His response was unusual. With Simon Calver, he rowed unassisted across the Atlantic, 3,000 miles in 52 days, raising around £160,000 for teenage mental health charity. He has since trained as an Associate Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation and built a coaching and keynote practice working with the Royal Marines, the Royal Navy, the NHS, Thames Valley Police, Google and The Times. Vice Admiral Martin Connell CBE described his HMS Warrior keynote as “a masterclass in self-awareness and resilience.” What he offers a corporate audience is the rare combination of credible coaching content and a lived reference point most rooms cannot match. He talks about burnout, recovery and sustained performance without the platitudes, and he talks about suicide directly when the brief calls for it. Key speaking topics Burnout in high-performance environments Mental resilience and recovery Stress management for senior leaders Suicide ideation and mental health honesty at work Self-leadership under sustained pressure Endurance and decision-making under fatigue Teamwork in extreme conditions Ideal for CHROs and heads of wellbeing designing serious mental health interventions for senior populations Leadership teams in high-pressure sectors (financial services, energy, defence, healthcare) Frontline and uniformed services audiences where psychological honesty is a credibility test Sales, trading and other commission-driven environments with elevated burnout risk Audience outcomes A clearer view of what burnout actually looks like inside senior teams, before it becomes attrition Practical language for talking about mental health at work without sentimentality A coaching practitioner’s perspective on stress and recovery, grounded in personal experience Greater comfort engaging with subjects most executive audiences avoid, including suicide

Why organisations work with Stef Reid A medal record, not a metaphor: triple Paralympic medallist, 2017 long jump world champion and five-time world record holder, with 18 years of evidence on what holds performance together when conditions change. Sharp specificity on the moment after the plan fails. Her material is built around what teams actually do in the hours and weeks after a setback, not the rhetoric of bouncing back. A working argument on inclusion that does not collapse into compliance language. Reid speaks about disability and difference as performance variables, drawing on her TEDxLondonWomen talk on accessible design and her public campaign that pushed Nike on single-shoe retail for amputee customers. Boardroom credibility built outside the speaking circuit: Vice President of British Athletics, broadcaster for Channel 4 and the BBC, MBE for services to Paralympic sport. Clients including BP, Sky, Bloomberg, Visa, McLaren, Barclays and Procter & Gamble, where the brief was leadership under pressure, not an inspirational set piece. Biography highlights Triple Paralympic medallist (Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016) and 2017 World Para Athletics long jump champion. MBE, 2018 New Year Honours, for services to Paralympic sport. Biochemistry graduate, Queen’s University, Kingston, on a full academic scholarship. Vice President of British Athletics and The Leprosy Mission UK; ambassador for London Air Ambulance and British Ice Skating. Broadcaster across Channel 4, BBC and CBC, including the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, the Invictus Games and the 2025 World Athletics Championships; Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Sports Host. TEDxLondonWomen speaker on accessible design; first British amputee to walk a London Fashion Week catwalk. Biography A boating accident at fifteen ended one version of Reid’s life and made the next one a question of design rather than recovery. The medical answer was amputation. The harder question, asked over the eighteen years that followed, was how to build a system, training, mindset, team, that turned a body operating under new constraints into one capable of winning at the highest level of world sport. She did. Three Paralympic medals across Beijing, London and Rio. A world long jump title in 2017. Five world records. An MBE in 2018 for services to Paralympic sport. The proof points sit on a single shelf, but the content she now brings to senior audiences sits underneath them, in the specific habits and decisions that allowed an athlete to keep performing through injury, classification changes and the routine collapse of plans. That material translates because organisations face the same problem in a different vocabulary. Reid works with leadership teams on the practical question of what high-performing groups actually do in the moment a strategy stops describing reality. Her talks for BP, Sky, Bloomberg, Visa, McLaren, Barclays and Procter & Gamble take the same arc, with frameworks built from elite sport science and her own career, not from generic motivational structure. The second strand of her work is inclusion as a performance question. Her TEDxLondonWomen talk argued that accessible design serves everyone, not a category. Her public campaign pressing Nike to sell single shoes to amputee customers made the same point in retail terms. As a broadcaster for Channel 4, the BBC and CBC, and as Vice President of British Athletics, she carries that argument into rooms where DEI language has otherwise lost its edge. Key speaking topics Adaptive mindset and team performance under pressure Resilience and recovery after setback High performance habits in elite sport and business Inclusion and disability as performance variables Mental health and sustained excellence Diversity as a competitive lever, not a compliance line Ideal for Senior leadership teams entering restructure, integration or a period of sustained pressure DEI, talent and culture leads briefing the board on inclusion as capability rather than reporting High-performing commercial, sales and trading teams operating under volatility Sales kick-offs, leadership offsites and all-hands moments where the audience needs a credible voice on adapting when the plan stops working Audience outcomes A clearer view of what a team’s actual response to setback says about its performance ceiling Practical habits drawn from elite-sport preparation that translate to operating decisions under pressure A sharper, less political vocabulary for inclusion that frames difference as a performance variable Renewed conviction at senior level that adaptive capacity is a leadership skill, not a personality trait

Why organisations work with Nick Hendrix A recognisable face from one of ITV’s longest-running primetime dramas, which gives award ceremonies, gala dinners and brand events an immediate sense of occasion. Live theatre training at RADA and on West End stages, which translates directly into clean autocue delivery, audience reading and recovery when an agenda slips. Comfort across formats: scripted keynote interview, awards script, panel moderation and after-dinner. The same person can run the evening end to end without a second host. A second professional life as an automotive journalist for the Financial Times’ How To Spend It, Square Mile and SPEARS, with brand work for Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, McLaren and Mercedes. Useful for luxury, automotive and lifestyle audiences. A substantive talk on confidence, rejection and sustaining performance through career volatility, available when the brief calls for content beyond hosting. Biography highlights RADA-trained actor, BA in acting, 2010, following a BA in drama from the University of Exeter. Plays DS Jamie Winter in ITV’s Midsomer Murders, his ongoing role since 2016. Stage credits include male lead Prince Digby in The Light Princess at the Royal National Theatre, plus work at The Old Vic and West End productions including What The Butler Saw at the Vaudeville. Film credits include Captain America: The First Avenger, Suffragette, Legend and Red Tails. Television credits include The Crown, Black Mirror, Call the Midwife, Foyle’s War, Silk and Marcella. Co-founder of DRIVEN, an automotive journalism company, with bylines in the Financial Times’ How To Spend It, Square Mile and SPEARS, and commercial work with Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, McLaren and Mercedes. Biography A working actor’s career is built on repeated rejection. For every part won there are dozens lost, and the craft of staying available, composed and credible across that volatility is closer to a corporate audience’s daily reality than it first appears. Hendrix has spent thirteen years inside that discipline, on a primetime ITV set, on West End stages, and in front of live audiences who give no second chances. Trained at RADA after a drama degree at Exeter, he has played DS Jamie Winter in ITV’s Midsomer Murders since 2016, alongside stage work at the National, The Old Vic and the West End. Screen credits include Captain America: The First Avenger, Suffragette, Legend, The Crown and Black Mirror. The body of work is broad enough to give an event audience an immediate point of recognition. A second career runs in parallel. Hendrix co-founded DRIVEN, an automotive journalism venture, and writes for the Financial Times’ How To Spend It, Square Mile and SPEARS. That work has produced commercial relationships with Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, McLaren and Mercedes, which gives him a working fluency with luxury, automotive and lifestyle brand audiences that few hosts can match. On stage at an event he leans on the obvious tools of his trade: a trained voice, accurate scripted delivery, a feel for pace and a willingness to improvise when an agenda moves. When the brief is content rather than hosting, his subject is the practical economy of confidence and resilience inside a career that has no fixed salary or guaranteed next job. Key speaking topics Awards hosting and event mastering of ceremonies Panel moderation and on-stage interviewing Confidence and performance under pressure Mental health and wellbeing in volatile careers Resilience through repeated rejection Luxury automotive and lifestyle brand engagement Ideal for Awards ceremonies, gala dinners and brand events that need a recognisable on-camera host Marketing, communications and brand teams in luxury, automotive and lifestyle sectors Conference programmes that need a polished panel moderator across the day Employee experience and wellbeing programmes looking for a recognisable, non-clinical voice on confidence and pressure Audience outcomes A clearly run evening or conference day, with an autocue-fluent host who keeps time and recovers cleanly when things move A concrete account of how performers manage live-performance pressure, told without self-help framing A working perspective on confidence as a trained habit, not a personality trait A relevant cultural reference point for luxury, automotive and lifestyle brand audiences

Why organisations work with Bonita Norris Her “Focus Not Fret” framework gives teams a specific, repeatable mechanism for redirecting attention under pressure, from what cannot be controlled to what can. Clients at Google and Alpine cite it by name as something still in use after the event. Her trajectory from complete novice to holder of two world records in three years is structurally identical to the challenge organisations face when asking teams to achieve stretch goals from a standing start, which is why the analogy lands rather than simply inspiring. The “Data Over Dogma” keynote reframes the 1953 Everest ascent as a triumph of scientific evidence over institutional resistance, creating a bridge to data and AI audiences that most expedition speakers cannot credibly make. She is the first British woman to summit Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest mountain: a credential that goes beyond Everest and signals sustained, multi-year commitment to extreme performance, not a single peak. Winner of Best Speaker Storyteller at The Speaker Awards 2024, with verified feedback from organisations across financial services, technology, FMCG, and professional services, not a single sector cohort. Biography highlights Youngest British woman to summit Everest (2010); youngest person to reach both the summit of Everest and the North Pole First British woman to summit Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest mountain (2012) Attempted to become the first British woman to climb K2, widely regarded as the world’s most dangerous mountain Author of The Girl Who Climbed Everest (Hodder & Stoughton, 2017); Amazon No. 1 in mountaineering and adventure (2022) Winner, Best Speaker Storyteller, The Speaker Awards 2024 Appearances on BBC News, ITV’s Lorraine, and BBC World Service; featured on HSBC’s Power Up Your Goals podcast (2024) Biography The question most organisations ask after a high-pressure failure is: what went wrong with the plan? The harder question and the more useful one is: what went wrong with the mindset? Bonita Norris has spent fifteen years developing a practical answer. She began climbing at twenty, having never touched a mountain. Two years later she stood on the summit of Everest, the youngest British woman to do so. A year after that she reached the North Pole, becoming the youngest person to hold both records simultaneously. None of it was the product of innate talent. It was the product of a specific way of managing fear, uncertainty, and the pressure of stretch goals: principles she has since codified and delivered in more than 650 corporate engagements worldwide. Her framework centres on three named concepts: “Success by Smallness”: the principle that ambitious goals are won through consistent, process-driven small actions; “Mountains of the Mind”: the argument that the limiting factor is almost always cognitive, not physical; and “Focus Not Fret”: a tool for redirecting attention from what is uncontrollable to what is actionable. These are not metaphors. They are structures that clients at Google, Clifford Chance, BlackRock, and Microsoft have applied directly. Her memoir, The Girl Who Climbed Everest, published in 2017, reached No. 1 on Amazon’s mountaineering and adventure chart in 2022. In 2024 she was awarded Best Speaker Storyteller at The Speaker Awards, recognition grounded in a consistent record of audience engagement across industries, not a single standout performance. Key speaking topics Resilience and mindset under pressure High performance in high-stakes environments Goal-setting and stretch ambition Overcoming fear and cognitive limitation Team cohesion and shared-goal culture Marginal gains and process-driven performance Data, evidence, and overcoming institutional resistance to change Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating high-pressure transformation or uncertainty Sales and commercial organisations working toward stretch targets CHROs and L&D leads designing resilience or performance programmes All-hands and conference audiences where cross-functional alignment and shared motivation are the goal Audience outcomes A named, portable framework – “Focus Not Fret” – for managing attention and decision-making under pressure Clearer understanding of why ambitious goals fail at the mindset level, and what specifically to do about it A reframed relationship with failure: practical insight into how mistakes accelerate rather than derail progress Greater awareness of how small, consistent actions – not heroic moments – produce exceptional results over time A shared reference point for team culture conversations around resilience, ambition, and collective performance

Why organisations work with Karl Dickson He has refereed at the level where every call is reviewed in slow motion by millions, including the 2023 Rugby World Cup final on the touchline, and translates that into how leaders hold a decision when it is being second-guessed in real time. He brings a rare dual perspective: a Premiership winner with Harlequins and a current PGMOT international official, so he can speak credibly to both the player under instruction and the official making the call. His material on communication is grounded in a discipline where being unclear costs you the room within seconds, useful for executives whose audiences increasingly behave the same way. He addresses public mistakes head-on. Refereeing offers no place to hide a wrong decision, and the recovery skill he teaches is directly applicable to leadership populations who fear visible error. Biography highlights 169 appearances for Harlequins as a scrum-half between 2009 and 2017 Replacement in the 2011 to 2012 Premiership final, won by Harlequins against Leicester Tigers Called into the senior England squad during the 2012 Six Nations and South Africa tour Member of the RFU Professional Game Match Officials Team since 2017 Quarter-final referee at Rugby World Cup 2023 (Wales v Argentina) and assistant referee for the final (South Africa v New Zealand) Six Nations referee, including the opening fixture of the 2024 Championship (France v Ireland) Biography Most leadership content treats decision-making under pressure as a mindset. In elite refereeing it is a practised skill, made under load, on camera, with no opportunity to consult, and with the entire stadium reacting before the decision has finished being made. Karl Dickson works at exactly that level. He refereed a Rugby World Cup quarter-final in 2023 and stood as assistant referee in the final between South Africa and New Zealand. He arrived at officiating from inside the game. Eight seasons at Harlequins, 169 appearances as a scrum-half, and a Premiership title in 2012 give him a player’s reading of the moment. England squad call-ups in 2012 and a near-cap mark the upper edge of that career. Few officials at his level have lived the other side of the decision so recently. His speaking work draws directly from that dual experience. He talks about the discipline of being decisive when the right answer is not yet obvious, the communication craft of holding a room of thirty professional athletes to a call they disagree with, and the recovery skill required when the replay shows you were wrong. Those are not metaphors for leadership. They are the same problems senior teams face when a market moves, a stakeholder pushes back, or a strategy turns out to have been mistimed. What he gives a corporate audience is a working operator’s view of public judgement. Premiership and Six Nations seasons run year-round; the 2024 Six Nations opener, France v Ireland in Marseille, was his. He is not retired. He is mid-career at the top of his sport, and the material is current. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Communication in high-stakes environments Composure and confidence in public roles Resilience after visible mistakes High-performance team dynamics Leadership lessons from elite sport Ideal for Senior leadership teams preparing for high-scrutiny moments: results announcements, regulatory hearings, restructure communications Sales, customer-facing, and front-line management populations whose decisions are visible and contested Executive development programmes focused on judgement, communication, and presence Annual conferences where the audience benefits from a credible voice on pressure and recovery Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what trained composure looks like, drawn from a domain where it is a job requirement Practical communication discipline for moments when an audience is sceptical, hostile, or impatient A more honest framework for handling visible mistakes, separating the error from the recovery Renewed confidence that decisiveness can be developed, not just born into