Resilience & Stress Management

Why organisations work with James Lang He brings live, professional rugby experience of operating at fly-half, the position responsible for in-game decisions under crowd noise, time pressure, and immediate consequences. That is a useful analogue for senior teams that have to make calls quickly in front of an audience. His career spans Harlequins (79 senior appearances) and Edinburgh Rugby in the United Rugby Championship, with six Scotland caps. The credentials are specific, verifiable, and current. He works in concrete language: setbacks, dropped balls, missed kicks, recovery between phases. Audiences leave with examples, not generic motivation. Useful for sessions where the buyer wants athlete-translated content on pressure and team trust rather than a corporate leadership lecture. Biography highlights Senior debut for Scotland against Canada in Edmonton, 9 June 2018, starting at inside centre in a 48-10 win. Six caps for Scotland between 2018 and 2021. 79 senior appearances for Harlequins between 2016 and 2021. Signed for Edinburgh Rugby in 2021, playing in the United Rugby Championship. Early career with Welsh side Rygbi Gogledd Cymru (RGC1404) before returning to the Harlequins academy. Educated at St Mary’s University and Bangor University. Biography Fly-half is the most exposed position on a rugby pitch. Every decision is public, every kick is counted, and recovery has to happen between phases of play. Lang has spent his senior career in that role, including a Scotland debut against Canada in Edmonton in June 2018 and 79 senior appearances for Harlequins before signing for Edinburgh Rugby in 2021. His route to professional rugby is itself part of the content. He left the Harlequins schoolboy programme for Welsh side Rygbi Gogledd Cymru as a teenager, then returned to the Harlequins academy in 2016. The detour gave him competitive minutes that more conventional pathways do not provide, and it shapes how he talks about non-linear progression. On stage he focuses on the practical mechanics of pressure performance: preparation routines, handling mistakes mid-game, and the team trust that holds when results do not. The reference points are specific moments in named matches, which makes the content useful for internal team sessions, sales kick-offs, and events where the brief is high performance and recovery rather than strategic leadership. The honest framing for a buyer: this is athlete-experience content. It is most powerful when the room wants a credible voice on composure and team dynamics, paired with substantive business speakers for the strategic agenda. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Team trust and collaboration Resilience and recovery from setbacks Self-motivation and elite habits Leadership in high-stakes moments Adversity and non-linear careers Ideal for Sales kick-offs and internal team conferences seeking an athlete’s voice on pressure and recovery. People and culture events focused on team trust and collaboration. Talent and graduate development programmes covering early-career resilience and non-linear progression. Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how elite athletes train composure rather than rely on it. Specific examples of recovery routines used between high-pressure moments. Language for talking about team trust that holds when results turn negative. A useful contrast between athlete preparation habits and typical corporate working patterns.

Why organisations work with Jack McMullen A working actor on a major Apple TV+ and BBC One drama slate, speaking from a career that has run continuously since age ten on the practical mechanics of performing under pressure. Two British Soap Awards as a teenager, including Best Newcomer for Brookside, give him a specific story about early-career exposure, public scrutiny, and recovering from the dip that follows. Mental health and wellbeing content rooted in lived experience of the acting industry, where rejection, instability, and visibility are constant. Reaches audiences that resist clinical or corporate framings. Comfortable as host as well as keynote speaker, useful for awards evenings, leadership retreats, and internal events that need a credible presenter rather than an MC for hire. Biography highlights Two British Soap Awards for Brookside (Channel 4): Best Newcomer and Best On-Screen Partnership with Sarah White. Long-running BBC roles as Tigger Johnson in Grange Hill and Finn Sharkey in Waterloo Road. Feature film Ford v Ferrari / Le Mans ’66 with Matt Damon and Christian Bale. BBC One’s prison drama Time alongside Sean Bean and Stephen Graham. Apple TV+ thriller Hijack opposite Idris Elba. Lead role as Jamie Phelan in BBC One’s This City Is Ours. Biography A career that begins on screen at ten and continues through a person’s mid-thirties is unusual in any industry. Jack McMullen made his television debut on Channel 4’s Brookside in 2002 and won two British Soap Awards before he had left school, including Best Newcomer and Best On-Screen Partnership. The years that followed are the material most working actors talk about least: long stretches of auditions, regional theatre, day-player roles on Casualty, Doctors, and The Bill, alongside a long-running BBC contract as Tigger Johnson in Grange Hill and Finn Sharkey in Waterloo Road. The work was constant. The visibility was not. The latter part of his career has been a steady move into prestige drama. Ford v Ferrari with Matt Damon and Christian Bale; BBC One’s Time opposite Sean Bean and Stephen Graham; Apple TV+’s Hijack with Idris Elba; the lead role of Jamie Phelan in BBC One’s This City Is Ours. His speaking work draws on the operating discipline that sits behind that arc, the mechanics of preparation, the management of nerves and rejection, and the practical experience of staying useful in a profession where most people do not. Where his content is most useful to organisations is in audiences that have stopped responding to standard wellbeing language. He is a working performer, not a coach with a model, and the credibility of what he says comes from the fact that he is still doing the work. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Confidence in high-visibility roles Mental health and wellbeing in performance careers Resilience after early success Motivation and personal discipline Storytelling and business communication Ideal for Internal conferences and away days where audiences have grown tired of corporate wellbeing framings Awards evenings and leadership retreats needing a credible host as well as a speaker Sales, trading, and client-facing teams operating in high-pressure, high-visibility environments Early-career and graduate audiences navigating exposure and rejection Audience outcomes A specific account of how working performers manage nerves, rejection, and exposure across a long career Language for talking about pressure and mental health that audiences who resist clinical framings will engage with A clearer view of confidence as a practised behaviour, not a personality trait An honest perspective on what sustained career performance actually requires when the visibility is uneven

Why organisations work with Jack Burnell He speaks from the inside of a public failure most leaders only read about: disqualified at Rio 2016 on the finish line, then open about the nightmares and depression that followed. He currently coaches Premier League footballers at Brentford FC on performing in the hardest sustained-pressure environment in European sport, so the material is live, not retrospective. He can translate the texture of elite competition, the silent weeks of preparation, the seconds in which a career-defining decision goes wrong, into language that senior teams recognise from their own work. His credibility is earned rather than claimed: GB’s first named Olympic quota place for the Rio open-water 10km, 2016 European silver, 2017 Abu Dhabi FINA World Cup gold. He is precise about what he is and is not: a performance mindset coach, not a clinical psychologist, which is the right framing for a corporate audience that wants applied insight rather than therapeutic content. Biography highlights Represented Great Britain at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in the 10km open-water marathon swim. Secured GB’s first named quota place for the Rio 2016 Olympic open-water event at the 2015 Kazan World Championships. Silver medal, 10km, 2016 European Open Water Swimming Championships. Gold medal, 2017 FINA Marathon Swimming World Cup, Abu Dhabi. Retired from competitive swimming in April 2021. Performance mindset coach at Brentford FC, working with first-team players on sustaining performance in the Premier League. Biography The Rio 2016 men’s 10km marathon swim ended for Jack Burnell with a second yellow card on the finish straight, a disqualification after what briefly looked like a fifth-place finish, and an unsuccessful appeal. He had arrived in Rio a month after winning European silver in the same event, as the first British swimmer named to Team GB for the open-water Olympic programme. What organisations rarely hear is what happens in the months afterwards. Burnell has spoken publicly about the nightmares and depression that followed, and about the specific, unpredictable triggers that brought the memory back. He did not stop. He returned to the World Championships the following year, won a FINA World Cup gold in Abu Dhabi in 2017, and continued in elite competition until retiring in 2021 after the Doha World Cup. That arc, the public failure, the private struggle, the continued competing, is the substance of what he now takes into rooms. Since retiring he has worked as a performance mindset coach at Brentford FC, introduced to the club by performance psychologist Tom Bates. He is careful about the label. He is not a clinical psychologist. He is a coach whose job is to help players perform in the Premier League, a sustained-pressure environment with few parallels outside elite sport. That live practice is what keeps his speaking content grounded in current work rather than past results. For senior teams the value is specific. Burnell gives organisations a close-range account of how high performers actually cope with repeated high-stakes pressure, how failure lands when it happens in front of the world, and what recovery looks like when the next event is already on the calendar. Key speaking topics Performance under sustained pressure Resilience and recovery after public setback Mental health in high-performance environments Decision-making in high-stakes moments Lessons from elite sport applied to leadership teams The role of performance mindset coaching in professional sport Ideal for CHROs and wellbeing leads building resilience and mental-health programmes for high-pressure functions Senior leadership teams operating under acute, sustained scrutiny Founders and executive teams at inflection points who need honest language for failure and recovery Sales, trading, and client-facing leaders whose teams work in repeated high-stakes decision cycles Audience outcomes A sharper read on how elite performers actually hold up and where they come apart Honest language for failure and recovery that people can use inside their own teams A working distinction between performance mindset coaching and clinical support, and where each belongs Practical reference points from Premier League football and Olympic open-water swimming that translate into everyday leadership pressure

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

Why organisations work with Dean Leak A working language for productive disagreement at the top of the house, captured in his “3 A’s” method (Absorb, Acknowledge, Ask), that teams can use the day after the session Direct operating experience inside Olympic gold-medal environments at Great Britain Taekwondo, British Canoeing, and British Shooting, not theory borrowed from sport A mentorship lineage to Professor Steve Peters and the Chimp Management model, applied with discipline to executive behaviour rather than repackaged as motivation Comfort moving between board rooms, military commanders, and elite athletes, which translates into a sharper read of how senior leaders actually behave under load Biography highlights Worked directly with Olympic gold medallists including Jade Jones and Joe Clarke Held senior leadership roles at Great Britain Taekwondo, British Canoeing, and British Shooting Mentored by Professor Steve Peters, author of The Chimp Paradox, over a five-year period Graduate of UK Sport’s leadership programme Corporate clients include L’Oreal, IBM, Microsoft, LinkedIn, PwC, Baker McKenzie, Specsavers, Mars Group, Air New Zealand, the BBC, and the British Government Author of the “3 A’s” disagreement framework and the “Human iOS” model of behaviour change Member, Association for Coaching Biography Gold medals are not won by teams that agree with each other. They are won by teams that can disagree, in the room, on the day, without the relationship breaking. That observation is the foundation of Dean Leak’s work with senior leadership teams. Leak spent more than a decade inside Olympic programmes, in roles that combined psychological skills coaching with operational leadership. He worked under Professor Steve Peters using the Chimp Management model, then took senior positions at Great Britain Taekwondo, British Canoeing, and British Shooting. The athletes he supported include Olympic gold medallists Jade Jones and Joe Clarke. The corporate work followed the same logic. Boards and executive teams behave like elite squads under pressure: they need composure, role clarity, and a way to surface friction without retreating into politeness. Leak’s “3 A’s” method (Absorb, Acknowledge, Ask) gives teams a reusable structure for disagreeing well. His “Human iOS” framework treats change as a problem of biology and attention, not slogans, which is why his sessions tend to stick with operators who have already heard the standard transformation script. Clients include L’Oreal, IBM, Microsoft, LinkedIn, PwC, Baker McKenzie, Mars Group, Air New Zealand, the BBC, and the British Government. He is a member of the Association for Coaching and a graduate of UK Sport’s leadership programme. Key speaking topics High-performance culture Productive disagreement and healthy conflict Leadership under pressure Change leadership Team performance Psychological safety Imposter syndrome at senior levels Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through restructure, integration, or strategic disagreement CHROs and chief people officers redesigning culture around performance, not engagement scores Leadership development directors briefing partner-track or senior management cohorts High-pressure operational environments (legal, professional services, elite teams) where stakes are personal and decisions are time-bound Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for naming and routing disagreement instead of avoiding it A clearer read on the behaviours that distinguish gold-medal teams from competent ones The 3 A’s method as a portable practice for senior conversations the next week A sharper view of where the team’s culture rewards comfort over accuracy Practical handles for managing personal composure under sustained pressure

Why organisations work with Daniel Chappell A first-hand account of raising significant early-stage capital with no trading history, which is the situation most internal innovation teams quietly find themselves in when pitching new ventures to their own boards. A working operator’s view of UNTIL, a business that pairs physical premises in Soho, Liverpool Street and Marylebone with a digital membership model. Useful for any leadership team thinking about hybrid product-and-place propositions. An unusually honest voice on neurodiversity from a founder who runs a company while managing dyslexia and dyspraxia, rather than a clinical or HR-led perspective. A high-performance sports background that translates the language of marginal gains, recovery, and team standards into the running of a commercial business, without leaning on tired sporting metaphor. Biography highlights Co-founder of UNTIL, a members business for freelance health, wellness and medical practitioners operating from three central London sites. UNTIL counts Steven Bartlett among its investors and co-founders, following a high-profile early funding round. MSc in Strength and Conditioning, Cardiff Metropolitan University. BSc in Sports and Exercise Science, St Mary’s University, Twickenham. Over a decade working inside high-performance sporting environments before launching his own ventures. Speaks publicly about dyslexia and dyspraxia, and treats neurodiversity as part of his founder identity, not a sidebar. Biography Service industries built on individual practitioners tend to share the same problem. The talent is excellent and the business model is fragile. UNTIL, the London business Daniel Chappell co-founded, was built around that gap: a members club and workspace that lets freelance health, wellness and medical professionals operate from premium premises in Soho, Liverpool Street and Marylebone without carrying the cost of their own. The route in matters. More than a decade inside high-performance sport gave Daniel an instinct for how elite practitioners work, what they need around them, and where their time is wasted. An MSc in Strength and Conditioning from Cardiff Metropolitan University and a BSc in Sports and Exercise Science from St Mary’s University, Twickenham sit behind that view. The transition from working with athletes to building a company for the people who work with athletes is the spine of the story. UNTIL has since attracted Steven Bartlett as an investor and co-founder, and has built a community of more than 300 practitioners across more than 40 disciplines. For a buyer, the value of the talk is not the milestone list. It is what the talk reveals about persuading investors with no trading history, building a founding team that can scale, and running a young company in public. Daniel is also open about managing dyslexia and dyspraxia as a founder, and speaks to neurodiversity from the inside of a working business. That perspective is useful in any leadership conversation about how organisations actually get the best out of people whose minds are wired differently from the average hire. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and founding-team dynamics Early-stage fundraising and investor relationships Building a business in the health and wellness sector High performance applied to commercial environments Neurodiversity in leadership and at work Team culture in young companies Resilience and personal performance for founders Ideal for Leadership offsites for scale-ups and founder-led businesses Corporate innovation, ventures and intrapreneurship teams HR and people leaders building practical neurodiversity programmes Wellbeing, benefits and employee-experience conferences Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what early-stage investors actually respond to when there is no trading history to point at. A practical framing of how a young founding team divides work, makes decisions, and survives the first eighteen months. A working model for treating neurodiversity as a commercial asset inside a team, with examples from a live business. Language for translating high-performance habits into a corporate or scale-up context without resorting to sports cliché.

Why organisations work with Conor Randall A first-person account of stage 4 stomach cancer, metastasis to multiple organs, sixteen rounds of chemotherapy, and a clear October 2023 remission. The story does the persuasion that wellbeing slide decks cannot. He gives leaders permission to open conversations about mental health without flinching, because the audience has just heard someone describe the floor of human experience. He focuses on the daily practice underneath recovery, acceptance, routine, and belief, rather than slogans. Useful for audiences who have heard every wellbeing keynote and stopped listening. He works well as a closing or anchor speaker on conference programmes that need an emotional gear change after dense content. Biography highlights Diagnosed at 29 with stage 4 stomach cancer, with metastasis to the pancreas, gallbladder, and abdominal nodules. Completed sixteen cycles of palliative chemotherapy and a partial stomach bypass before stepping away from conventional treatment in September 2022. Scans in October 2023 confirmed no active cancer remaining. Speaks internationally on resilience, mental and physical wellbeing, mindset, and dealing with setbacks. Publishes long-form writing on his recovery, including the essay “An Unexpected Journey” on Medium, and shares the story across LinkedIn and TikTok. Represented by multiple international speaker bureaux, including Speakers Associates and Kruger Cowne. Biography In November 2021, at 29, a routine investigation returned a stage 4 stomach cancer diagnosis with metastasis to the pancreas, gallbladder, and abdominal nodules. Conor Randall was given an initial prognosis measured in weeks. A partial stomach bypass and sixteen cycles of palliative chemotherapy followed. In September 2022, he stepped away from conventional treatment and turned to holistic methods, working on stress, trauma, belief, and daily routine. He has written that the work was as much psychological as physiological. By October 2023, scans showed no active cancer remaining. He now speaks to corporate audiences, conferences, and leadership gatherings about what the recovery actually required, day by day. The talks centre on acceptance, mindset, routine, and the practical content of resilience when a person is being asked to live differently. He writes long-form on Medium, including the essay “An Unexpected Journey”, and is represented by international speaker bureaux, including Speakers Associates and Kruger Cowne. The value to a serious organisation is narrow but real. He is not a clinician, researcher, or HR practitioner. He is a person who has been to a place most audiences only fear, returned from it, and learned to talk about it in a way leaders can use to open conversations about mental health that would otherwise stay closed. Key speaking topics Resilience and mental wellbeing Mindset and belief under adversity Dealing with setbacks Stress management Acceptance and recovery Daily routine as a wellbeing practice Mental and physical health Ideal for Internal wellbeing weeks, mental health awareness moments, and people-team events Sales kick-offs, all-hands meetings, and conferences seeking an anchor or closing speaker with emotional weight Leadership offsites where senior teams are under sustained pressure Healthcare, life sciences, and patient-facing organisations engaging with the patient perspective Audience outcomes A vivid, first-person reference point for what resilience looks like under extreme conditions Permission to talk openly about mental health and adversity inside a professional setting Practical handholds, acceptance, belief, routine, that audiences can take into their own week An emotional reset on a conference programme that has become dense or transactional

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