Resilience & Stress Management

Why organisations work with Charlotte Storey She trains leaders in the craft of presence using the same technical toolkit she used on stage: voice, physicality, and mindset under observation. Most executive coaching talks about presence. Hers drills it. She has coached the Royal Marines Band through two of the most scrutinised live performances in recent British history: the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III. The stakes reference is not theoretical. Her work on disability inclusion is grounded in her own route into a commercial pilot’s seat with one arm, which gives her a specific, operational view on how hiring and development systems overlook non-standard candidates. Her method is concrete and demonstrable in the room: accent work, physical embodiment, vocal control, and anxiety regulation. Audiences leave with techniques they can rehearse, not concepts they have to translate. She bridges two audiences that rarely share a speaker: performance-anxious specialists (musicians, surgeons, pilots, public-facing executives) and HR and inclusion leaders working on disability at senior levels. Biography highlights Former West End actor and professional saxophonist, now working as a performance and communication coach to senior leaders. Gained a UK pilot’s licence in 2021 and flies a light aircraft as pilot in command, having lost the use of her right arm in 2008. Coached HM Royal Marines Band through the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III. Delivered a 2023 keynote at the Lockheed Martin UK Leader Conference, described by CEO Paul Livingston as the most impactful presentation seen at the annual conference. Client roster includes the BBC, Disney, Nickelodeon, the Bank of England, NatWest, the European Business Aviation Association, Warburtons, and Homebase. Lives with Ehlers-Danlos Hypermobility Syndrome and speaks from direct experience on the practical mechanics of disability in high-performance careers. Biography The Royal Marines Band rehearsed for months before the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III. Charlotte Storey was the performance coach they brought in to handle the part of the job that does not show up in a music score: staying composed when the eyes of the world are on the ensemble and there is no room for a wrong note. That commission captures the work. Storey started in the West End as an actor and professional saxophonist, then moved into elite voice and acting coaching in UK conservatoires before her current career as a speaker and executive coach. Her specialism is what happens to people technically and physically when the pressure rises: voice tightens, breath shortens, attention collapses inward. She trains it out of them. The second strand of her work comes from lived experience. In 2008 she lost the use of her right arm following complications of Ehlers-Danlos Hypermobility Syndrome. In 2021, afraid of heights and working with a disability that grounds most pilots, she gained her licence and now flies as pilot in command. That route into the cockpit informs her work on disability inclusion, which she treats as an operational question about how organisations find and promote non-standard talent, not a values statement. Her keynote list runs from Lockheed Martin UK’s Leader Conference to the BBC, Disney, Nickelodeon, the Bank of England, NatWest, and the European Business Aviation Association. The through-line is the same: a practitioner teaching senior people how to perform, in the craft sense of the word, when it matters most. Key speaking topics Executive presence and the craft of performing under pressure Performance anxiety in high-stakes professional settings Non-verbal communication and vocal authority for senior leaders Disability inclusion in senior hiring and promotion Self-mastery and composure for client-facing and public-facing roles Audacious leadership and risk tolerance in technical careers Team dynamics in elite ensembles and high-performance units Ideal for CHROs, heads of leadership development, and DEI leaders working on presence, progression, and disability inclusion at senior levels. Executive teams preparing for high-stakes external appearances: investor days, regulatory hearings, media, large-scale town halls. Specialist professional communities where composure under scrutiny is part of the job: aviation, defence, surgery, financial services, broadcasting. Conferences seeking an inspirational keynote that has craft content underneath, not only a personal story. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for what presence is made of, with specific techniques for voice, breath, and physical positioning. Practical tools for regulating performance anxiety before high-stakes appearances. A sharper view of how hiring and promotion systems filter out disabled and non-standard candidates, and what changes that. A reset on the role of rehearsal and craft in senior leadership, drawn from performing arts practice. A direct experience of the techniques in the room, delivered by a speaker trained to hold the space.

Why organisations work with Ben Tavassoli A working screen actor, currently visible in Channel 4’s Screw and previously a lead in BBC One’s New Blood, who chooses to talk in workplace settings about what high-visibility work actually costs him. Personal testimony rather than wellness theory, which lands differently with audiences who have heard the corporate wellbeing pitch before and tuned it out. Useful for events where the goal is to break the room’s silence on mental health, particularly with male audiences and high-performance cultures where vulnerability is rare. A profile audiences recognise from screen, which removes the friction of introducing an unfamiliar voice on a sensitive subject. Biography highlights Lead role as Arrash “Rash” Sayyad in BBC One’s New Blood, the detective drama created and written by Anthony Horowitz. Lead role as Mikey Markides in Sky One’s Bulletproof. Louis Costa in Channel 4’s prison drama Screw. Screen credits across Silent Witness (BBC), No Offence (Channel 4), and Fox’s Tyrant. Feature film roles in Warner Brothers’ Overlord, produced by J.J. Abrams, and An Acceptable Loss opposite Jamie Lee Curtis. Scouted out of drama school in 2015 by a UK talent agency. Biography The entertainment industry runs on visible confidence and private cost. Actors are paid to appear composed in the moments they are most exposed, and the same pattern shows up in any culture that rewards people for looking unaffected by pressure. That is where the conversation Ben Tavassoli leads to in corporate rooms begins. Tavassoli left drama school in 2015 after a UK talent agency signed him, and worked across UK and US production almost immediately. His credits include Anthony Horowitz’s BBC One detective drama New Blood, where he played trainee investigator Rash Sayyad, the Sky One series Bulletproof, Channel 4’s No Offence and Screw, and BBC’s Silent Witness. On film he appeared in Warner Brothers’ Overlord, produced by J.J. Abrams, and opposite Jamie Lee Curtis in An Acceptable Loss. Alongside that career he speaks publicly about his own mental health, drawing on the pressures of audition, rejection, and sustained visibility. He frames the conversation around the gap between public performance and private state, and the cost of pretending those two things are the same. The point in a corporate setting is rarely about acting. It is about the cultures that ask people to perform competence whether or not they are coping. His value in a room is recognisability and candour. Audiences encounter a face they know from television talking honestly about a subject most leaders find difficult to introduce. For events focused on stigma reduction and the substance of wellbeing rather than its branding, he is a credible opening voice. Key speaking topics Mental health in the workplace Resilience under pressure Personal wellbeing and self-management Workplace culture and stigma reduction Confidence and self-presentation Lessons from a screen acting career Ideal for Internal wellbeing weeks, mental health awareness events, and CHRO-led culture moments Male-dominated and high-performance environments where stigma around mental health is the main barrier Client-facing or public-facing teams under sustained visibility pressure Early-career and graduate audiences in industries with intense performance expectations Audience outcomes A more honest internal vocabulary for discussing mental health at work Permission for senior people in the room to name pressure they would normally keep private A working example of how someone with public visibility manages the gap between performance and private state A reduction in the assumption that wellbeing content has to be clinical or generic to be useful

Why organisations work with Annie Emmerson A live event host who can carry a main-stage running order with the timing of a BBC Olympic broadcaster, then close the day with a personal keynote from elite sport. First-hand authority on managing anxiety and self-doubt during selection and qualification cycles, drawn from competing at the top of triathlon and duathlon under Brett Sutton. A credible voice for women’s leadership sessions, having built an elite career and a broadcast career in two male-dominated industries without making that the only story she tells. Practical, unshowy fluency in mental health conversations earned through years co-hosting Her Spirit with Louise Minchin and The Be Braver podcast. Biography highlights Retired in 2006 as the world’s number one ranked duathlete. Represented Great Britain in triathlon, duathlon, cross-country, track, and half marathon. BBC commentator across three Olympic Games, most recently Paris 2024, and Commonwealth Games coverage. Lead reporter and commentator for Super League Triathlon since 2018. Co-host of the Her Spirit podcast (2019 to 2021) with Louise Minchin and co-host of The Be Braver podcast. MC and host for Le Blanq cycling tours since 2020 and Channel 4 sports reporter. Biography Most people who reach the top of an endurance sport start young. Annie Emmerson did not. She came into triathlon late, trained under Brett Sutton, and retired in 2006 as the world’s number one duathlete after representing Great Britain across triathlon, duathlon, cross-country, track, and half marathon. That route shapes the content she now brings to corporate audiences. The pressure of late-career qualification, the management of injury, and the experience of being one of the only women in a coaching environment dominated by men became the working material for her speaking on resilience, mental health, and women in high-performance settings. Broadcasting is where she now spends most of her professional life. She has commentated on three Olympic Games for the BBC, including Paris 2024, covered Commonwealth Games, and been a lead voice on Super League Triathlon since 2018. She reports for Channel 4 and hosts Le Blanq cycling tours. Two podcasts sit alongside the broadcast work. Her Spirit, co-hosted with Louise Minchin from 2019 to 2021, focused on women’s mental health and physical activity. The Be Braver podcast continues that thread. The combined effect is a speaker and host who can hold a main-stage room with broadcast pacing, then talk about anxiety, scrutiny, and recovery with the credibility of someone who has lived through them. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained pressure Mental health and anxiety in high-performance environments Women in male-dominated industries Motivation and late-career reinvention Event hosting and moderation Sport, performance, and recovery Ideal for Leadership conferences and women’s networks looking for a keynote anchored in lived performance, not theory Wellbeing and mental health summits seeking a speaker who can talk about anxiety credibly without clinical framing Annual conferences and awards evenings needing an MC who can host the day and deliver a personal keynote in the same brief Sports, endurance, and cycling brand events seeking a recognised BBC broadcast voice Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what resilience looks like as a daily working practice rather than a slogan Permission to talk about anxiety and self-doubt in performance settings without treating them as weakness A concrete account of how a woman built authority inside two male-dominated industries Sharper appreciation of the link between physical practice, recovery, and sustained mental performance

Why organisations work with Jill Payne A working method, not a mood-lift. Her Energy Management framework gives leaders and teams a shared language for how they move, what they focus on, and how they talk to themselves under load. Credibility with high-performance environments. She has coached the Canadian Women’s Olympic Rugby 7’s programme on mental conditioning and culture, and applies the same playbook inside companies. A book the field has rated. Be a Dime won Gold at the 2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the Self-Help category, published by Figure 1 Publishing. Range across sectors that demand precision. Named corporate clients include Google, NASA, McDonald’s, Sony, PepsiCo, Boeing, and Western Union. Tools audiences keep using. Her sessions hand over named practices, the Body, Focus, Dialogue (BFD) sequence among them, that leaders can take back into their week. Biography highlights Author of Be a Dime: Unleash Your Inherent Energy and Live Life More Joyfully (Figure 1 Publishing). Gold Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award, Self-Help, 2024. Master’s in Workplace Wellness / Employee Engagement & Workplace Performance; undergraduate degrees in Human Kinetics and Education. Mental Conditioning and Culture Coach to the Canadian Women’s Olympic Rugby 7’s programme. Former Team Canada athlete in Sprint Canoe and Rugby. Corporate clients include Google, NASA, McDonald’s, Sony, PepsiCo, Boeing, Western Union, NBC. Biography Most wellbeing programmes treat burnout as something to soften after the fact. Payne treats it earlier, as a question of capacity. How a leader moves through the day, what they choose to attend to, and the running dialogue they hold with themselves all sit upstream of how much pressure they can absorb before judgement slips. That logic became the Energy Management framework, now used inside organisations across North America. The method is built on three working levers, body, focus, and dialogue, which Payne treats as a single system rather than three wellness habits. Her book Be a Dime sets out the approach in long form and won Gold at the 2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in Self-Help, published by Figure 1 Publishing. Her credibility comes from working inside environments where the cost of poor energy is immediate. As Mental Conditioning and Culture Coach with the Canadian Women’s Olympic Rugby 7’s programme, she applied the same method she now brings to senior teams at Google, NASA, McDonald’s, Sony, PepsiCo, Boeing, and Western Union. The academic spine is a Master’s in Workplace Wellness and Employee Engagement, layered on undergraduate work in Human Kinetics and Education. For an organisation absorbing change fatigue or watching engagement scores drift, Payne gives leaders a concrete operating practice, not another wellness initiative. The work is closer to mental performance coaching than to mindfulness, and it equips senior teams to keep showing up clearly when conditions tighten. Key speaking topics Energy management and personal capacity Burnout prevention and recovery Resilience under sustained pressure High-performance team culture Mental conditioning for leaders Joy and engagement at work Workplace wellbeing strategy Ideal for CHROs, CPOs, and heads of talent rebuilding engagement after sustained change Senior leadership teams managing performance under prolonged pressure Wellbeing and learning leads moving past surface-level wellness programming High-performance functions, sales, trading floors, clinical leadership, where capacity is the constraint Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for energy as an organisational capacity, not a private wellness concern The Body, Focus, Dialogue (BFD) sequence as a practice that leaders can apply that week A clearer read on the early indicators of burnout inside their own teams Specific practices for joy and recovery that are grounded in evidence, not slogans A reframe of resilience as a daily operating habit, taught and reinforced

Why organisations work with Rahul Kapoor A mindset framework taught inside IIM Bangalore’s Executive General Management Programme since 2009, not a stage routine reverse-engineered into a workshop. Two published books with Times Group Books and a long catalogue of corporate engagements with Accenture, Amazon, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung give buyers a track record across multinational audiences. Content is built for the personal layer of leadership performance: focus, self-direction, recovery, decision discipline. The brief that fits is “our senior people are running on empty,” not “we need a lecture on strategy.” Delivers in English and Hindi across South and Southeast Asia, the Gulf, and North America, which is rare for the South Asian executive audience segment. Biography highlights Guest faculty, IIM Bangalore, since 2009, leading the “Bond and Learn” programme for EGMP, Entrepreneurs & Family Businesses, and Armed Forces cohorts. Author of Workwise: Lessons in Excellence for Young Professionals (Times Group Books) and Dad and I. Outstanding Young Persons of India Award (2010); Young Achievers Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2016). Corporate engagements with Accenture, Amazon, Adobe, American Express, Cisco, Dell, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, SAP Labs, Nestle Nutrition Institute. Contributor to The Times of India (Education Times), Dainik Bhaskar, and Feelings Magazine. Bilingual delivery in English and Hindi, with engagement track record across India, the Gulf, Southeast Asia, and North America. Biography Most senior professionals reach a ceiling that has nothing to do with skill. Their calendars are full, their results are visible, and yet the personal layer underneath, the capacity to think clearly and recover quickly, is no longer keeping up with the role. Rahul Kapoor’s body of work addresses that layer directly. He has been guest faculty at IIM Bangalore since 2009, where his “Bond and Learn” sessions sit inside the Executive General Management Programme, the Entrepreneurs and Family Businesses Programme, and the Armed Forces Programme. The institutional context matters: the same content that runs as a keynote in a corporate room has been refined inside one of India’s most rigorous executive education environments for over a decade. His book Workwise: Lessons in Excellence for Young Professionals, published by Times Group Books, codifies the framework. Dad and I, a second book aimed at younger readers, extends it. Two awards, the Outstanding Young Persons of India and the Young Achievers Award for Social Entrepreneurship, recognise the contribution to early-career and youth audiences alongside the corporate work. The corporate roster reads like a global technology and professional services list: Accenture, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Adobe, American Express, SAP Labs. What buyers in those rooms are commissioning is not a strategy lecture. It is a confident, bilingual practitioner who can shift the internal state of a senior audience inside ninety minutes and leave them with a usable mental model afterwards. Key speaking topics Mindset and self-leadership Personal performance and goal achievement Purpose, values, and work-life integration Resilience and emotional regulation under pressure Team motivation and engagement Executive development for early- and mid-career leaders Ideal for CEO and CHRO audiences commissioning an opening or closing keynote at leadership offsites Sales and revenue teams entering a high-stakes quarter or post-restructure period Executive education and high-potential cohorts inside multinationals operating in South and Southeast Asia Family business and entrepreneur networks looking for a serious mindset and values session Audience outcomes A direct framework for self-direction and personal performance that survives contact with a real working week Renewed clarity on individual purpose and how it maps onto current organisational role Practical tools for emotional regulation and recovery under sustained pressure A shared language inside the team for discipline, focus, and follow-through

Why organisations work with Victoria Humphries A lived account of decision-making in life-threatening conditions, including falling through Arctic ice, that translates directly to how senior teams behave when the stakes are real and the recovery margin is thin. An executive track record across teaching, governance, consulting and running an EdTech business, so the resilience material lands as commercial advice, not adventure storytelling. A specific focus on the leadership behaviours that hold workforces together through repeated restructure: small steps, visible composure, recovery from setback. Co-author of Frigid Women, the published account of the 1997 first all-female North Pole expedition, which gives the keynote a documentary anchor rather than a retold anecdote. Repeat use by leadership-development and change programmes at AkzoNobel, Tarmac, Coventry Building Society, COBIS, Pfizer and ServiceNow. Biography highlights Member of the first all-female relay expedition to the North Pole, 1997. Co-author of Frigid Women, published by Eye Books, written with her mother, Sue Riches. Three-time Guinness World Record holder, as cited on her speaker profiles. 25-plus years across education, governance and commercial leadership, including managing director of an EdTech company. Keynote and workshop client list including AkzoNobel, Coventry Building Society, British Telecom, AQA Education, Tarmac Springboard, Pfizer, ServiceNow and COBIS. Biography The 1997 expedition to the North Pole was twenty women in a relay across shifting Arctic ice, in temperatures around minus 40, with rescue dependent on aircraft that could only land in a narrow weather window. Victoria Humphries was one of them. She and her mother Sue went through the ice into the Arctic Ocean at one point and got themselves out. That story sits underneath the rest of her work as a leadership speaker. The expedition is documented in Frigid Women, the book she co-wrote with her mother and published through Eye Books. It is not a motivational text. It is an account of how a non-professional team prepared for, survived and recovered from a sustained ordeal, and what each person had to manage in their own head to keep going. That makes it useful source material for organisations dealing with fatigue and repeated change, rather than a one-off shock. The commercial track record is what allows the polar story to do useful work in a corporate room. Twenty-five years of teaching, governance, consultancy and running an EdTech business gives her the language of leadership development, restructure and team performance. Programmes she has delivered for AkzoNobel, Coventry Building Society, Tarmac, Pfizer, COBIS and ServiceNow are positioned as resilience and change content, not adventure speeches. Her signature talks, Managing Change in a Changing World, One Step at a Time and Be Bold, Be Brave, Be You, take the same idea into different audiences. The argument is consistent: when conditions stay hard for a long time, what holds a team together are small, visible acts of composure from the people leading it. Key speaking topics Resilience and stress management Leading through sustained change Self-leadership under pressure Team leadership in difficult conditions Women in business and leadership Motivation and self-belief Diversity, equity and inclusion Ideal for Leadership development programmes for newly senior managers, including high-potential and emerging-leader cohorts. HR, talent and learning teams are designing resilience or change-readiness content into a wider curriculum. Conferences and town halls during or after a restructure, integration, or sustained period of operational pressure. Women’s leadership networks and inclusion programmes that want a speaker with a substantive professional record alongside the personal story. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how composure under pressure shows up as a leadership behaviour, not a personality trait. A method for breaking long, uncertain change into the next single step a team can act on. A frame for recovering from a setback at work without losing the team’s commitment to the next phase. A more honest read on personal capability, particularly for people who have under-rated their own resilience.

Why organisations work with Jennifer Hyman She has run the full arc of a venture-backed consumer subscription business, from a Harvard Business School idea in 2008 to a $1.7 billion IPO in 2021, and can speak to each stage with named decisions rather than highlight-reel anecdotes. She led Rent the Runway through a near-existential 2020, when its core demand collapsed overnight, and reset the cost base, capital structure and product. Boards under pressure want that recovery story from the operator who lived it. She sits on the board of The Estee Lauder Companies and advises Goldman Sachs through the Launch With GS council, giving her a working view of how large incumbents think about disruption from the inside. She is one of only 30 women to have taken a US company public and the first to do so with an all-female CEO, COO and CFO line-up. That credential travels well in conversations about leadership pipeline and capital access. She speaks from the operator seat on how AI is changing what a customer relationship actually is, drawing on Rent the Runway’s own use of data and personalisation rather than abstract framing. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Rent the Runway since 2009; Chair of the Board. Took Rent the Runway public in October 2021, raising $357 million. Board Director, The Estee Lauder Companies. Audit Committee and Nominating and ESG Committee. Founding member of the NYSE Board Advisory Council. Adviser to Goldman Sachs via the Launch With GS Council. Named to TIME 100 Most Influential People (2019); Fortune 40 Under 40; Fast Company Most Creative People in Business; Forbes 12 Most Disruptive Names in Business. BA in social sciences and MBA, Harvard University. Biography Rent the Runway started as a Harvard Business School project in late 2008 and reached public markets in October 2021 as the first US listing led by an all-female CEO, COO and CFO trio. The company raised $357 million and listed at a $1.7 billion valuation. The person who built it from idea to ticker is Jennifer Hyman, co-founder, CEO and Chair of the Board. The interesting period for boards is not the launch. It is what happened after. The pandemic took out Rent the Runway’s core demand, weddings, events, office wear, almost overnight in early 2020. Hyman cut costs, restructured debt, reworked the subscription product, and brought the business through to IPO eighteen months later. She has since had to defend the model against shifting consumer behaviour, capital market repricing of growth, and the entry of larger players into resale and rental. Outside the operator role, Hyman serves on the Board of Directors of The Estee Lauder Companies, on its Audit Committee and Nominating and ESG Committee. She is a founding member of the NYSE Board Advisory Council and sits on the Launch With GS Advisory Council for Goldman Sachs, where the brief is improving capital access for female and diverse founders. She was named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People list in 2019, with the profile written by Diane von Furstenberg. Hyman’s value in a board conversation is the texture of having actually done the things most strategy decks describe. She can speak to category creation, to subscription unit economics under stress, to the use of AI in personalisation and inventory, and to the politics of taking a venture-backed consumer business through a public listing without losing operational grip. Key speaking topics Subscription business model design Category creation in consumer markets Recovery and reset after demand shock AI in consumer personalisation and inventory Capital access for founders and underrepresented operators Founder-CEO journey through IPO Ideal for Boards and executive teams reviewing strategy under model pressure CEO and CFO audiences in consumer, retail, fashion and subscription businesses Investor and capital-markets events focused on founder access to capital Women’s leadership and pipeline programmes at senior levels Audience outcomes A clear-eyed account of what category creation actually costs from someone who has done it A working view of how a venture-backed CEO restructures a business through a demand shock Insight into how AI is being used in subscription consumer businesses today, with named examples from Rent the Runway A senior-operator perspective on the IPO process and post-listing reality Specific arguments for how capital access changes when founder pipelines change

Why organisations work with Levison Wood He has tested leadership and team principles under conditions where failure has a real cost, including a 4,250-mile walk along the Nile and a circumnavigation of the Arabian Peninsula through Iraq, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. His military background as a Parachute Regiment captain in Afghanistan gives him a working framework for decision-making under pressure that translates cleanly into commercial settings. “The Art of Exploration” sets out a usable structure on curiosity, resilience and team behaviour that boards and senior teams can apply, rather than a set of war stories. He brings a credible outside perspective on geopolitics and operating in unfamiliar environments, drawn from on-the-ground work in regions most leaders only read about. Bureau-listed clients including Bosch, Nokia, Diageo, Bank of America and Virgin indicate a track record with senior commercial audiences rather than only event circuits. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Fellow of the Explorers Club, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Chancellor of Staffordshire University, installed May 2024. Honorary doctorates from Staffordshire University and the University of Nottingham. Author of bestselling titles including “Walking the Nile”, “Walking the Himalayas”, “Arabia”, “The Last Giants” and “The Art of Exploration”. “Walking the Himalayas” named Adventure Travel Book of the Year at the 2016 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. Producer and presenter of major documentary series for Channel 4, including “Walking the Nile”, “Walking the Himalayas”, “Walking the Americas” and “Arabia with Levison Wood”. Biography The first ever expedition to walk the length of the Nile began in December 2013, in the Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda, and finished nine months and 4,250 miles later in the Mediterranean. The walker was Levison Wood, a former Parachute Regiment captain who had served in Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul, and who had decided that exploration was a more honest test of the same disciplines. What separates his work from adventure storytelling is the operating logic underneath it. Walking through Iraq, Yemen, Syria, the Empty Quarter and the Darien Gap forces specific decisions about risk, team composition, local intelligence and when to abandon a plan. Those decisions are recognisable to anyone running a complex programme in a volatile environment. He has put the framework on paper. “The Art of Exploration”, published in 2021, sets out how curiosity, resilience and small-team discipline operate when the route is unknown, and is the basis of his keynote of the same name. His other books, including “Walking the Himalayas”, which won the Edward Stanford Adventure Travel Book of the Year in 2016, and “Arabia”, treat the expeditions as case material rather than autobiography. The institutions have followed. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Explorers Club, holds honorary doctorates from Staffordshire University and the University of Nottingham, and was installed as Chancellor of Staffordshire University in May 2024. Senior corporate audiences at Bosch, Nokia, Diageo, Bank of America and Virgin have booked the same body of work. Key speaking topics Leadership under uncertainty Decision-making in complex environments Team performance and small-team discipline Resilience and recovery from setback Risk assessment and mitigation Curiosity as a leadership practice Geopolitics and operating in unfamiliar regions Ideal for CEOs and executive teams setting strategy in volatile or unfamiliar markets. Operations, transformation and programme leaders responsible for delivery under shifting conditions. Leadership development audiences in financial services, industrials and consumer businesses. Boards and senior offsites looking for an outside perspective on risk and decision-making. Audience outcomes A working sense of how experienced operators make decisions when information is incomplete and the environment keeps moving. Specific examples of how small teams hold together under sustained pressure, drawn from named expeditions across the Nile, the Himalayas and the Arabian Peninsula. A sharper view of how to identify, weigh and live with material risk rather than try to remove it. A reframed sense of curiosity and adaptability as operational disciplines, not personality traits. A vocabulary for talking about resilience that does not collapse into motivational language.

Why organisations work with Kimberley Wilson She is dual-trained as a Chartered Psychologist and a nutritionist, which lets her connect food, sleep and stress to measurable cognitive and behavioural outcomes that HR and clinical leads both recognise. Her Whole Body Mental Health approach gives leaders a workable thesis: brain health is built, not gifted, and the inputs sit inside the working day. Her clinical track record is unusually serious for the corporate stage. She led the therapy service at HMP and YOI Holloway and served as a Governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Mental Health Trust. She has translated the science into two trade books, How to Build a Healthy Brain and Unprocessed, and a regular media platform that includes BBC Radio 4 and BBC Science Focus. She turns research into practice. Audiences leave with specific behaviours to adopt, not a general call to look after themselves. Biography highlights Chartered Psychologist with a Master’s degree in Nutrition, running a private practice in central London. Former Governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Mental Health Trust. Former Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Training Committee in Counselling Psychology. Led the therapy service at HMP and YOI Holloway, then Europe’s largest women’s prison. Author of How to Build a Healthy Brain (Yellow Kite, 2020) and Unprocessed (Penguin, 2023). Host of BBC Radio 4 podcast Made of Stronger Stuff; contributor to BBC Science Focus and Psychologies Magazine. Biography Mental health programmes inside organisations have stalled at the level of awareness. Awareness has not lowered burnout rates or improved cognitive performance, and senior leaders know it. The next conversation is about what physically builds and protects the brain at work. That is the territory Kimberley Wilson has spent her career in. She is a Chartered Psychologist with a Master’s degree in Nutrition, and she works at the point where psychology, food and physiology meet. Her clinical credentials sit in serious places. She was a Governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Mental Health Trust, chaired the British Psychological Society’s Training Committee in Counselling Psychology, and led the therapy service at HMP and YOI Holloway. Her published work makes the argument explicit. How to Build a Healthy Brain set out the lifestyle inputs, sleep, nutrition, movement, recovery, that protect cognitive function across a lifetime. Unprocessed pushed further, showing how modern diets are shaping mood, behaviour and decision quality at population scale. Both books are written for general readers, which is why they translate well to a corporate audience. On stage she is plain spoken, evidence led and useful. She gives leaders a framework for thinking about brain health as infrastructure, and gives employees specific things to change on Monday morning. For organisations spending real money on wellbeing without seeing the return, that combination is the point. Key speaking topics Whole Body Mental Health Brain health and cognitive performance at work Nutrition, mood and behaviour Stress, recovery and burnout prevention Sleep and high-performance teams Workplace mental health strategy Ideal for CHROs and Heads of People rebuilding wellbeing strategies that need to show measurable impact. Boards and executive teams concerned with cognitive performance, decision quality and senior leader burnout. Health, safety and wellbeing leads in high-pressure sectors such as financial services, professional services, healthcare and defence. Audience outcomes A clear thesis on how brain health is built, and where it can be protected or eroded inside the working day. Specific behaviours linked to sleep, nutrition, movement and recovery that audiences can apply immediately. A more accurate reading of the link between food, mood and decision-making at work. A sharper view of where wellbeing investment actually shifts performance, and where it does not.

Why organisations work with Rebecca Minkoff Two decades of operating the same brand through three retail eras: department store, direct-to-consumer digital, and the post-pandemic rebuild. Few founder speakers have run their own brand long enough to talk credibly about all three. A working playbook for founder reinvention. After losing 70% of revenue in 2020, Minkoff repositioned the business; she can speak to the operational decisions that recovery actually required. Convening power with other women founders. Through the Female Founder Collective and the Superwomen podcast, she has interviewed and worked alongside operators like Katie Couric, Bozoma St. John and Jessica Alba, and brings that network into the room. A published thesis on founder behaviour. “Fearless” (HarperCollins Leadership, 2021) sets out the specific rules she used to build and rebuild the brand, giving audiences a single argument to react to rather than a career retrospective. Biography highlights Founder and Co-Creative Director of Rebecca Minkoff, established 2005, distributed across 900+ stores worldwide and own retail in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Korea. Founder of the Female Founder Collective (2018), a network of 9,000+ women-led businesses providing education, mentorship and strategic resources. Author of “Fearless: The New Rules for Unlocking Creativity, Courage, and Success” (HarperCollins Leadership, 2021). Host of the “Superwomen with Rebecca Minkoff” podcast, with guests including Katie Couric, Bozoma St. John and Jessica Alba. Recipient of the Accessories Council Breakthrough Designer Award (2011). Active member of the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America). Biography The Morning After Bag was designed in 2005 by a 24-year-old who had moved to New York at 18 to work in fashion. Twenty years later, that handbag is still in production, the brand carries Rebecca Minkoff’s name across 900 stores, and the founder has had to rebuild her own company more than once to keep it there. That second part is where she becomes useful to organisations. Minkoff has run the Rebecca Minkoff brand through the collapse of department store retail, the rise of direct-to-consumer digital, and a pandemic that erased 70% of her business in a single year. The business she now operates is structurally different from the one she founded, and she has had to make every one of those changes herself. In 2018, she founded the Female Founder Collective, now a 9,000-member network for women-led businesses, and launched the Superwomen podcast, where she has interviewed founders and operators including Katie Couric, Bozoma St. John and Jessica Alba. In 2021 she published “Fearless” with HarperCollins Leadership, a book that sets out the specific operating rules she used to build the brand and stay in business. The Accessories Council named her Breakthrough Designer in 2011. She is an active CFDA member. The more interesting credential, for a senior buyer, is that she has run the same name-on-the-door consumer brand for two decades, which is not a position many founders reach. Key speaking topics Founder reinvention after market shock Building and scaling a consumer brand Direct-to-consumer and digital retail Women in entrepreneurship and access to capital Brand longevity over multiple retail eras Networks and mentorship for women founders Risk-taking and rule-breaking in brand building Ideal for Founders, CEOs and senior commercial leaders at consumer brands navigating channel disruption or category decline. Heads of DTC, brand and customer for retail and consumer-goods companies rebuilding after demand shocks. Corporate networks and ERGs for women in leadership, particularly those focused on entrepreneurship and progression to founder roles. Investor, accelerator and venture-platform audiences working with women-led portfolios. Audience outcomes A specific operator account of how a consumer brand survives twenty years of retail change, told by the person whose name is on the building. A concrete view of what founders actually do after a 70% revenue loss, beyond the post-mortem narrative. A picture of how networks like the Female Founder Collective change the funding and mentorship arithmetic for women-led businesses. The argument from “Fearless” in the founder’s own words, including which of the rules held under pressure and which did not.

Why organisations work with Leland Melvin He has lived two career-ending events and returned from both. A hamstring injury ended his NFL prospects; a training accident left him partially deaf and medically grounded before he was cleared to fly. Leaders running fatigued teams listen to him because the material is earned. He is the only person drafted into the NFL who has flown in space, and he uses that arc as a working case study on reinvention, not as a curiosity. The narrative carries weight in rooms that have heard most astronaut and athlete talks before. He ran NASA Education as Associate Administrator and co-chaired the White House STEM Task Force. He speaks credibly to boards and CHROs on future skills and pipeline strategy, not only on inspiration. His STS-122 mission delivered Europe’s Columbus laboratory to the ISS. The crew was American, French, German, and led a delicate international handover. He draws on that for executives managing multinational teams under public scrutiny. Author of Chasing Space with HarperCollins, with a Young Readers edition still in active use across US school systems. The book is a working reference for the keynote, not a souvenir. Biography highlights Retired NASA astronaut, mission specialist on STS-122 and STS-129 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis, with over 565 hours in space. NASA Associate Administrator for Education and head of NASA’s education portfolio at the Senior Executive Service level. Co-chair of the White House Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force and chair of the International Space Education Board. Drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1986; the only person drafted into the NFL to have flown in space. BSc Chemistry, University of Richmond; MSc Materials Science Engineering, University of Virginia. Specialist in optical fibre sensors at NASA Langley before astronaut selection. Author of Chasing Space: An Astronaut’s Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2017). Biography A training tank at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston ended Leland Melvin’s astronaut career before it started. A water-pressure incident during EVA training left him partially deaf and medically disqualified from flight. NASA assigned him to its education office. Three years later, a flight surgeon cleared him on a waiver, and he flew to the International Space Station on STS-122 to deliver the Columbus laboratory module. The path to that flight ran through two earlier identities. Chemistry at the University of Richmond on a football scholarship. A masters in Materials Science Engineering at the University of Virginia. A research career at NASA Langley working on optical fibre sensors for composite structures, while training camps with the Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys, and Toronto Argonauts closed one by one through hamstring injuries. Selection as a NASA astronaut came in 1998. Two missions followed, STS-122 in 2008 and STS-129 in 2009, totalling more than 565 hours in orbit. What gives the speaking work its weight is what came after the flights. As NASA Associate Administrator for Education from 2010 to 2014, Melvin oversaw the agency’s national education portfolio and co-chaired the White House Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force. He sat at the senior level on US STEM policy. Chasing Space, published by HarperCollins in 2017, took the personal account into wider circulation and remains in use as a school text in its Young Readers edition. He works now with executive audiences on the operating content of resilience: how a leader keeps a fatigued team functioning when the people in it are quietly carrying serious setbacks, and how to design a pipeline that pulls talent from places most organisations do not yet look. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after career-altering setbacks High-performing teams in high-consequence operating environments Inclusive leadership and multinational crew dynamics STEM education, future skills, and pipeline strategy Lessons from human spaceflight for executive teams Personal reinvention and second-act careers Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers, and learning leaders building resilience and inclusion programmes with substance Senior teams emerging from restructure, redundancy, or burnout cycles Education, public sector, and STEM-focused organisations setting talent pipeline strategy Conferences seeking a credentialed plenary voice on inspiration that withstands scrutiny Audience outcomes A working sense of what resilience looks like as a leadership behaviour, not a personal trait A specific account of how international crew performance is built and maintained under pressure A clearer view of the pipeline question: where future technical talent is found and what blocks it A vivid Earth-observation perspective that lifts the room without softening the argument

Why organisations work with Simon Keith A lived case study in decision-making when the cost of failure is absolute, drawn from two heart transplants, a kidney transplant and a return to professional sport. Member of the Order of Canada, awarded in 2022 for organ donation advocacy, signalling national-level credibility well beyond the speaker circuit. A second-act career as an operator who has built and sold companies and led turnarounds, which means the room hears the sporting story through a business lens. Author of Heart For The Game, with a foreword by Steve Nash, giving conference organisers a tangible artefact to put in delegates’ hands. A speaker who has addressed the White House Organ Summit, the Canadian Parliament and the British Parliament, which sets the calibre of the rooms he is comfortable holding. Biography highlights First professional athlete in the world to play after a heart transplant, following his 1986 surgery at Papworth Hospital under Sir Terence English. No. 1 overall pick in the Major Indoor Soccer League draft, selected by the Cleveland Crunch in 1989. Member of the Order of Canada (2022), for advocacy of organ donation and support for transplant recipients. Founder and CEO of the Simon Keith Foundation, supporting young transplant recipients returning to active life. Author of Heart For The Game: The Incredible Saga of Simon Keith (2012), co-written with Jason Cole and Don Yaeger, foreword by Steve Nash. Speaker at the inaugural White House Organ Summit (2016), and at both the Canadian and British Parliaments. Biography Most leaders will never face the moment Simon Keith faced at twenty-one. In July 1986, at Papworth Hospital outside London, he received the heart of a seventeen-year-old donor named Jonathan Edward. Three years later he was the No. 1 overall pick in the Major Indoor Soccer League draft, the first athlete in the world to play professional sport after a heart transplant. That single fact tends to dominate the room. What gives it commercial weight is what he did with the thirty-five years that followed. He played in the MISL with the Cleveland Crunch, retired into business, and built and sold companies across multiple industries. He has led turnarounds and run operating roles in healthcare and organ procurement, which is the world that gave him his life back. In March 2019, his body rejected the 1986 heart. He received a second heart transplant and a kidney transplant in San Diego, and returned to work. In December 2022, Governor General Mary Simon appointed him a Member of the Order of Canada for his advocacy of organ donation and for his support of transplant recipients through the Simon Keith Foundation, which he founded to fund young organ recipients returning to active life. On stage, the story carries the credentials. He is direct, unsentimental, and more interested in what an audience does on Monday morning than in how they felt on Friday afternoon. He works in two registers: the close, personal account of decision-making under existential pressure, and the operating perspective of someone who has run companies and knows what a leadership team is actually asking for when they ask for resilience. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under existential pressure Resilience and recovery after personal or professional shock High-performance leadership Team trust and culture Organ donation, transplantation and patient advocacy Business turnaround leadership Ideal for Executive leadership teams and senior leaders facing prolonged pressure or restructure High-performance sales, operations and field leadership conferences Healthcare, life sciences and medical device audiences Annual all-company kickoffs where the organisation is asking for composure, not just energy Audience outcomes A frame of reference for the difference between coping with pressure and leading through it A clearer view of what self-belief looks like as an operational discipline, not a slogan Renewed willingness to make decisions when the conditions are not yet stable A specific account of how a leader rebuilds after a setback the team has watched in real time