Resilience & Stress Management speakers

Why organisations work with Glenn Marsden In his hands, mental health becomes a business conversation that senior leaders take responsibility for, grounded in lived experience of body dysmorphia and the loss of a close friend. He has built and scaled a global advocacy platform from zero, the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign, which gives him direct evidence of what changes when people in positions of influence speak openly about their own pressure. His keynote treats wellbeing as a leadership issue, connecting how senior people hold identity and performance under change to the cultural cost of silence at the top. His content travels: a published book series, the ImperfectlyPerfect Podcast, and hundreds of public-figure interviews give audiences a body of work to carry on with long after the keynote. Biography highlights Founder, Imperfectly Perfect Campaign, launched 2018, a global mental wellbeing advocacy movement. Author of the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign book series, with Volume 3 released January 2026. Host of the ImperfectlyPerfect Podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, interviewing public figures on mental health and wellbeing. Has delivered speaking engagements across Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Dubai, Thailand, and Japan. Biography The cost of mental health pressure inside organisations is now showing up where it used to stay hidden. It sits with the people running them. Glenn Marsden built the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign in 2018 to make that conversation possible, starting with a question senior leaders rarely answer in public: what does it actually cost you to keep up appearances? The campaign was founded after the suicide of a close friend and Marsden’s own struggle with body dysmorphia. What began as a single advocacy project has grown into a content platform with a published book series, the ImperfectlyPerfect Podcast, and a long roster of public-figure interviews. The argument that runs through all of it is simple: when people in positions of visibility speak openly about their own pressure, the social permission for everyone else to do the same expands. What audiences get is a working argument, made by someone who has spent years getting senior people to say in public what they say to each other in private: that perfectionism is expensive, silence at the top sets the tone for the rest of the organisation, and the leaders who name the pressure first are the ones who change the culture. Key speaking topics Mental health and the cost of perfectionism Identity and self-worth through change Resilience under sustained pressure Authentic leadership and lived experience Building advocacy platforms from zero Storytelling and public influence Ideal for CHRO and chief people officer audiences setting the mental health agenda Executive leadership offsites where wellbeing is treated as a strategy issue Senior leadership development programmes addressing perfectionism and burnout in high performers Conferences on workplace wellbeing, culture, and mental health where lived experience adds credibility to the data Audience outcomes A direct, founder-led account of how mental health pressure operates at senior levels and why it stays hidden. Words for naming perfectionism and silence inside organisations, without the wellness clichés. A map of how identity loss works after disruption, and how people find direction again, drawn from what the campaign has surfaced across cultures and industries. Evidence, from the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign and the hundreds of public-figure conversations it has gathered, of what changes when people in positions of influence speak openly.

Why organisations work with Gloria Garcia She has made high-stakes decisions for a living, protecting ultra-high-net-worth families across Chicago, Mexico City, New York, London and Paris. The lessons she brings on presence and judgement come from work where the cost of error is not a missed quarter. Her background is operator-grade, not adjacent: Cook County Sheriff’s Department, Special Operations Response Team training, corrections leadership in the RTU Men’s Division, SIA-licensed close protection. Buyers get someone who has done the job, not someone who has studied it. She is one of a very small number of senior female close protection specialists on the international circuit, which gives her a credible platform for audiences working on women’s progression in operational, security and male-dominated environments. Her acting practice, including a role cast personally by J.J. Abrams in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, gives her a second language for presence, performance and audience reading that translates directly into executive communication. She speaks from a personal story, a survived kidnapping attempt at age 11, without making the story the product. The story sets up the work; the work is what she teaches. Biography highlights Cook County Sheriff’s Department officer, trained under the Special Operations Response Team (S.O.R.T.) and posted to Cook County Prison’s RTU Men’s Division. SIA-licensed close protection operative with over twenty years of experience protecting ultra-high-net-worth clients internationally. Known professionally as “La Mirla” (“The Blackbird”) within the private protection circuit. Actress cast personally by J.J. Abrams as the “Jakku Defender” in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). Recent screen credits include Dr. Sofia Guijarro in Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue (2025) and Agent Niki Delgado in Malice (2025-26). Represented for speaking by Kruger Cowne; life rights reported in development as a feature film with producer Lucas Foster. Biography Most executives will never work a live protection detail. The people who do will tell you the job is not physical force. It is attention: who is in the room, what has changed in the last thirty seconds, which person is a threat and which is a distraction. Gloria Garcia has spent two decades doing that job at the top of the market, for ultra-high-net-worth principals across Chicago, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, London and Paris. Her training is operator-grade. She came through the Cook County Sheriff’s Department under the Special Operations Response Team, ran a post in Cook County Prison’s RTU Men’s Division, then moved into international close protection as an SIA-licensed specialist. Inside the circuit she is known as “La Mirla”, “The Blackbird”. It is not a nickname she uses on stage. It is the one her peers use for her. She is also a working actress. J.J. Abrams cast her personally as the “Jakku Defender” in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. More recent roles include Dr. Sofia Guijarro in Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue and Agent Niki Delgado in the series Malice. The overlap matters: acting and protection both turn on reading people, holding presence, and adapting in real time. When she talks to leadership audiences about composure and communication, both practices are visible in the room. The personal starting point is a survived kidnapping attempt at age 11, in Cicero, Illinois. She tells that story because it explains the choice of career, not because it is the lesson. The lesson is what she built afterwards: a discipline of attention, trust and communication that senior leaders recognise the moment they hear it. Key speaking topics Decision-making under physical and reputational threat Situational awareness and presence in high-stakes rooms Communication tactics in protective and adversarial settings Women in operational and male-dominated roles Trauma, recovery and the choice to protect others Trust and composure in executive teams Ideal for Senior leaders and boards wanting a visceral perspective on judgement under pressure Security, risk and resilience functions looking beyond technical content Women’s leadership programmes in operational, industrial or security-heavy sectors Culture and communication events where presence and credibility are the brief Audience outcomes A sharper mental model for what composure actually looks like, from someone who uses it professionally Practical ways to read a room faster, including who to listen to and who to watch A clearer sense of how to communicate authority without raising volume A human account of turning a formative threat into a working discipline Renewed appetite for putting trusted operators, not only specialists, in front of senior teams

Why organisations work with Gordon Buchanan A working BBC broadcaster, not a retired one. Three decades of presenter-led natural history series mean he holds an audience the moment he steps on stage, before the substantive content begins. A credible male voice on mental health, grounded in In the Hide: How the Natural World Saved My Life, a Sunday Times bestseller. The story is his own, which is why audiences listen. A genuine conservationist with institutional backing: MBE for services to conservation and wildlife film-making, patronages of Trees for Life and The Gorilla Organization, ambassadorship of the Scottish Wildlife Trust. Stories from inside hides in Svalbard, Ellesmere, Mumbai and Mongolia, used to make points about composure, patience and decision-making under sustained physical pressure rather than as travelogue. Range across the brief: keynote, after-dinner, fireside, awards host. The presenter craft is the asset that makes the substantive content land in a corporate room. Biography highlights Scottish wildlife cameraman, filmmaker and presenter; over thirty years with the BBC and other major broadcasters. BBC series include The Bear Family and Me, The Polar Bear Family and Me, Snow Wolf Family and Me, Gorilla Family and Me, Elephant Family and Me, Tribes, Predators and Me, Life in the Snow, Our Changing Planet and Big Cats 24/7. MBE, 2020 New Year Honours, for services to conservation and wildlife film-making. Honorary Doctorate, University of Stirling; Honorary Fellowship, Royal Scottish Geographical Society; Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award (Environment), 2013. Author of In the Hide: How the Natural World Saved My Life (Penguin, 2025), instant Sunday Times bestseller. Patron of Trees for Life and The Gorilla Organization; Ambassador of the Scottish Wildlife Trust. Biography Most conversations about resilience in organisations stall at vocabulary. People know what they are supposed to say. They struggle to say anything useful about how a person actually stays functional through sustained pressure, repeated setback and long stretches of discomfort. A voice that has lived the question, in concrete and unglamorous detail, lands differently in the room. Three decades of BBC natural history work have put Gordon Buchanan inside cramped camera hides in Svalbard, Ellesmere, Mumbai and Mongolia, often for weeks at a time, in extreme cold, sleep deprivation and physical risk. Series including The Bear Family and Me, Snow Wolf Family and Me, Gorilla Family and Me, Tribes, Predators and Me and Big Cats 24/7 have made him one of the most widely watched presenters in British wildlife television. The published work behind the keynote is In the Hide: How the Natural World Saved My Life, an instant Sunday Times bestseller from Penguin in 2025. It is an honest account of a hard childhood in Glasgow and on Mull, the mental-health pressures that followed a public career, and the role of routine, family, exercise and the natural world in staying well. The book is the reason corporate audiences hear him as a credible voice on men’s mental health rather than a wildlife presenter making a side argument. Institutional recognition tracks the conservation half of the same career: an MBE in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to conservation and wildlife film-making, an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Stirling, an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, and active patronages of Trees for Life, The Gorilla Organization and the Scottish Wildlife Trust. Key speaking topics Mental health, resilience and the restorative role of the natural world Men’s mental health and the cost of silence Storytelling as a leadership and engagement tool Patience, composure and decision-making under sustained pressure Wildlife conservation and the climate-nature agenda Connection to nature as a workplace wellbeing input After-dinner storytelling drawn from three decades of BBC filming Ideal for HR, people and wellbeing leads designing mental-health programmes that need a credible male voice Leadership offsites and senior partner retreats where the conversation needs to go beyond resilience language Sustainability, ESG and conservation-linked events anchored by a recognised BBC presenter After-dinner and awards-night programmes where presenter craft matters as much as topic Audience outcomes A more honest internal vocabulary for mental health, particularly among men who do not usually engage with the topic A specific picture of what sustained composure under pressure looks like in practice, drawn from filming conditions in extreme environments A renewed case for nature, routine and physical activity as legitimate wellbeing inputs rather than soft extras A clearer link between the conservation agenda the organisation talks about and the human story behind it Footage and stories that audiences remember long after the session, useful for downstream internal communication

Why organisations work with Greg Rusedski A first-hand account of competing in a Grand Slam final under exceptional public pressure, the 1997 US Open played in the days after the death of Princess Diana, told by someone who was on the court. A 16-year tour career and 15 ATP titles, anchored by a serve that held the world record at 149 mph, giving him direct authority on the relationship between preparation, technique, and execution. Nearly two decades inside the BBC Wimbledon commentary box, which gives him a working analyst’s read on the modern game, useful for audiences who want sport informed by craft, not nostalgia. A confident, warm after-dinner presence, regularly booked for corporate dinners, hosting, awards, and tennis hospitality, where the brief is engagement rather than abstract leadership theory. Biography highlights 1997 US Open singles finalist; first Briton in the US Open final in more than 60 years. Career-high ATP World No. 4; British No. 1 in 1997, 1999, and 2006. 1999 Grand Slam Cup champion; 15 ATP singles titles. 1997 BBC Sports Personality of the Year and ITV Sports Champion of the Year. BBC Wimbledon commentator since 2008, with previous broadcast roles at Sky Sports and Eurosport. Ambassador for Borne, the medical research charity for premature birth. Biography Reaching a Grand Slam final is rare. Reaching one in the week after Princess Diana’s funeral, in front of a global audience expecting something more than tennis, is rarer still. The 1997 US Open final put Rusedski on Arthur Ashe Stadium against Pat Rafter, and made him the first British man in the US Open final in more than six decades. That season took him to ATP World No. 4 and to the 1997 BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. The serve, clocked at 149 mph, held the world record for years before Andy Roddick broke it. Across a 16-year career he won 15 ATP singles titles and the 1999 Grand Slam Cup, and was British No. 1 in 1997, 1999, and 2006. Since retirement in 2007, signalled live on the BBC alongside Sue Barker, he has been a fixture in the BBC Wimbledon commentary team, with earlier broadcasting at Sky Sports and Eurosport. The commentary work keeps him close to the technical detail of the modern game, which is what gives his speaking the texture of a working analyst rather than a retired pro. For corporate audiences his content is concrete: the preparation routines that kept him on tour for sixteen years, the small decisions inside a tight match, the experience of carrying national expectation, and the discipline of performing when the conditions are not the ones you trained for. Key speaking topics Performance under public pressure Elite tennis and the modern professional game Career longevity in individual sport Mindset and preparation in competition After-dinner sports storytelling Event hosting and corporate hospitality Ideal for Corporate dinners, awards nights, and client hospitality, particularly tennis-themed events around Wimbledon and the US Open. Sales and customer-facing teams that respond to first-hand sports performance content. Sponsor activations and partner events for brands in tennis, broadcasting, and premium hospitality. Audience outcomes A direct account of what it takes to compete in the late stages of a Grand Slam. Specific examples of how elite players prepare, recover, and reset between points and matches. A working commentator’s read on the current state of professional tennis. A confident, well-paced after-dinner experience built around real career moments rather than generic motivation.

Why organisations work with Greg Rutherford He is one of only five athletes in history to hold Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth titles in the same event at once, which gives a keynote or event a level of sporting authority most bureaus cannot supply He hosts and moderates at broadcast standard, with live experience covering Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 for Eurosport and co-hosting World Athletics’ daily podcast, which makes him a credible choice for award nights, conference plenaries and panel chairs His career arc covers a documented public injury history, a planned exit from elite sport, and a deliberate reinvention into broadcasting and entertainment, which gives substance to a talk on managing setback and second careers rather than generic adversity copy He carries mainstream cultural reach from Celebrity MasterChef, Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing on Ice, which lifts attendance and social engagement for client and consumer-facing events Biography highlights Olympic long jump gold medallist, London 2012, with a winning jump of 8.31m, the first British long jump Olympic title since 1964 World Athletics Champion 2015, Commonwealth Champion 2014, European Champion 2014 and 2016, Olympic bronze 2016 British outdoor long jump record holder at 8.51m MBE for services to athletics (2013); European Athletics Lifetime Achievement Award (2018) Eurosport and Discovery+ athletics analyst, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympic coverage; co-host of “The Breakdown” with Orla Chennaoui Celebrity MasterChef winner 2019; Dancing on Ice 2024 finalist; competed on the British Bobsleigh World Cup circuit in 2023 Biography Long jump is a sport with a thin margin. A foul board, a tailwind, a hamstring, and a championship is gone. In 2012 Rutherford produced 8.31m in front of 80,000 people in the Olympic Stadium and ended a 48 year wait for British long jump gold. Three years later he completed a set only four other athletes in history have managed, holding Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth titles in the same event, with the Diamond League crown added on top. What sits behind those results is a long career of injuries, near misses and rebuilds. Rutherford’s public record is unusually honest about the cost of staying at the top of an event for a decade, which is why his material on pressure, recovery and reinvention reads as lived rather than performed. Since retiring he has built a working second career in broadcast. He covered Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 for Eurosport and Discovery+, co-hosts World Athletics’ official podcast with Orla Chennaoui, won Celebrity MasterChef in 2019, reached the Dancing on Ice final in 2024, and competed for British Bobsleigh on the World Cup circuit. The through line is a working knowledge of what it takes to perform on a deadline in front of an audience, which is the basis of his value to corporate clients as a keynote, host or moderator. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Resilience and recovery from setback Reinvention and second careers Goal setting and sustained focus High-performance mindset Olympic and elite sport storytelling Ideal for Annual conferences and kick-offs needing a high-credibility motivational keynote Awards nights, gala dinners and brand events needing a broadcast-quality host or MC Sales and commercial teams under stretch targets Wellbeing, leadership and learning events for senior managers and high-potential talent Audience outcomes A felt sense of how elite performers prepare for moments where there is no second chance Practical language for managing setback, injury or career disruption without losing competitive edge A clearer view of how sustained top-end performance is built across years, not single seasons A memorable event anchor, with stories and footage from Olympic competition that audiences talk about afterwards

Why organisations work with Guillaume Nery He has held four constant weight freediving world records and won the AIDA individual world title in 2011, so the performance authority is earned in a discipline where a lapse in attention has physical consequences. His material on breath work is specific and practical, not metaphorical: audiences leave with techniques he uses himself before a dive to -125 metres. He speaks from the full arc of elite performance, including a career-ending accident in 2015 that forced a public reinvention as a filmmaker and storyteller. His underwater films with Julie Gautier, including Free Fall and One Breath Around the World, have reached tens of millions of viewers and give his talks a visual language most sport speakers do not have. He is a TED main-stage speaker, which most corporate audiences recognise as a filter for delivery quality before the first slide. Biography highlights Four-time AIDA constant weight world record holder, with a personal best of -126m set in Cyprus in 2015. AIDA Individual World Champion, Kalamata, 2011, with a -117m dive. AIDA Team World Champion with the French national freediving team. TED main-stage speaker, “The exhilarating peace of freediving”, 2015. Co-director, with Julie Gautier, of Free Fall, Narcose and One Breath Around the World. Profiled by National Geographic, CNN and South China Morning Post Style. Biography A freediver on a single breath has no second chance to reset. The dive is planned on the surface, executed in silence, and any break in focus on the way down or up carries a real physical cost. Guillaume Nery spent more than a decade operating in that environment at world-championship level. He set his first constant weight world record at 19 and went on to break it three more times, reaching a personal best of -126m in Cyprus. In 2011, in Kalamata, he won the AIDA individual world title on a -117m dive. With the French national team, he added a team world championship. The ending was not clean. At the 2015 world championships in Cyprus the dive line was mis-set, sending him to -139m instead of the planned -129m. He blacked out near the surface, suffered a lung barotrauma and retired from competition. That break point is now part of the talk, not a footnote to it. Since retiring he has worked as a filmmaker with Julie Gautier, producing Free Fall at Dean’s Blue Hole, Narcose and One Breath Around the World. His TED talk on freediving has reached a wide corporate audience. The material he brings to a keynote is grounded in what he actually does before a deep dive: breath work, attention control, and the discipline of staying calm when the margin for error is small. Key speaking topics Breath work and physiological self-regulation Performance under extreme pressure Attention and composure in high-stakes moments Recovery and reinvention after a career-defining setback Elite sport psychology applied to business Visual storytelling and ocean exploration Ideal for Leadership offsites focused on composure and decision quality under pressure Wellbeing, resilience and peak-performance programmes for senior teams Sales, trading and operations groups whose work involves sustained concentration in high-stakes windows Conference main-stage slots that need a visually strong, narrative keynote Audience outcomes A working understanding of how breath directly changes physiological and cognitive state. Specific techniques the speaker uses himself to prepare for extreme performance, translated to a meeting-room context. A reframed view of setbacks, drawn from a public career-ending accident and the reinvention that followed. A visual reference point, from the underwater films, that audiences remember and repeat.

Why organisations work with Hamda Al Qubaisi She is a working case study, not a retired one. She is still competing at the front of an international single-seater field, which gives her perspective on inclusion the credibility of present tense rather than retrospect. The credential is specific and verifiable: first woman to podium in Italian F4, third in the inaugural F1 Academy championship with MP Motorsport, Red Bull Academy programme driver. Audiences can place her without an introduction. She speaks from inside the Gulf, not about it. For organisations operating in the Middle East, or building gender strategies that have to work in the region, that vantage point is unusual on the international circuit. Her message is operational, not motivational. She addresses what funding, family backing, and team-level decisions actually made the difference, which is closer to what HR and DEI leads need than a generic empowerment talk. Biography highlights Member of the Red Bull Academy Programme, representing Red Bull Racing in the 2024 F1 Academy season. Drove for MP Motorsport in the inaugural 2023 F1 Academy season, finishing third in the championship with four wins and seven podiums. First woman to score a podium in Italian F4, at Misano in 2021. First Emirati driver invited to the FIA CIK-FIA Karting Academy Trophy, in 2016. Featured by Nasdaq, Formula 1, Arab News, Goodwood, and Entrepreneur Middle East on women in motorsport and STEM. Ambassador for Abu Dhabi-based Yas Heat Racing; signed with AKCEL GP x PHM Racing for the 2025 F4 Middle East Championship. Biography Single-seater motorsport is one of the most consistently male environments in elite sport. The path through karting, regional Formula 4, and feeder series rewards drivers who have been visible to teams from childhood, which historically has not included girls from the Gulf. The arrival of a competitive Emirati woman in that pipeline is not a soft story about representation. It is a structural anomaly worth understanding. Hamda Al Qubaisi entered Italian F4 in 2019 and in 2021 became the first woman to podium in the championship’s history, at Misano. She won three races on home soil in the F4 UAE series and built the record that earned her a seat with MP Motorsport for the inaugural F1 Academy season in 2023, where she finished third overall with four race wins and seven podiums. The Red Bull Academy Programme signed her for 2024, putting her on the Red Bull Racing development pathway and giving her a commercial platform that few drivers, male or female, reach in their early twenties. She closed her two-year F1 Academy stint with two podiums in the final three races at Yas Marina, in front of a home crowd. What makes her useful in a corporate setting is the specificity of her account. She has spoken publicly, including at Nasdaq MarketSite, about how partnerships, family backing, and access to machinery decide who actually makes it through, rather than the abstract language of empowerment. For audiences in the Gulf, or for organisations whose inclusion work has to function in that region, she offers a first-person view from inside the pipeline that is still being built. Key speaking topics Women in male-coded high-performance environments Diversity and inclusion in motorsport and STEM Emirati and Gulf perspectives on women in sport Resilience and pressure management in elite competition Sponsorship, partnerships, and access in early careers Sustainable technology and the future of motorsport Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads designing inclusion programmes for technical, engineering, or operational workforces Organisations with a Gulf footprint building gender strategies that have to function regionally Corporate sponsorship, partnership, and brand teams in motorsport, automotive, and STEM Women’s leadership networks and graduate audiences in engineering and high-performance disciplines Audience outcomes A first-person view of what it takes for a woman to enter and hold a place in a male-coded technical field A clearer read on the Gulf context for women in sport, STEM, and competitive performance Specific examples of how sponsorship, family backing, and team decisions shape who progresses A working case for inclusion grounded in present-tense competition, not retrospective career story Honest framing of the pressure, scrutiny, and trade-offs that come with being the first or only in a room

Why organisations work with Hasnain Kazim He has spent a decade testing, in public, what actually works when people shout at you. “Post von Karlheinz” turned his replies to hate mail into a national bestseller, and the method underneath it travels directly into how leaders and communications teams handle hostile audiences. He reports from inside the conditions most executives only read about. Six years as a Der Spiegel foreign correspondent in Islamabad and Istanbul, ended by the Turkish state refusing to renew his press credentials, gives him concrete material on authoritarian drift, migration and press freedom rather than abstract commentary. He speaks and writes in German and English with equal fluency, which matters for DAX and European-headquartered organisations briefing a single voice across jurisdictions on identity, integration and public discourse. He works as both author and moderator. The same person who wrote the argument can host the board dinner, chair the panel, or carry an awards night, which reduces briefing overhead for events that need a serious thinker on stage. His published rhetorical guide, “Auf sie mit Gebruell!”, is specifically about how to argue in public against populism without losing the room. That is a usable internal-comms and leadership-communication frame, not a lecture topic. Biography highlights Der Spiegel South Asia correspondent, Islamabad, 2009 to 2013. Der Spiegel Turkey correspondent, Istanbul, 2013 to 2016; left after the Turkish government refused to renew his press credentials. CNN Journalist Award winner, 2009. Bestselling author with Penguin Verlag, including “Post von Karlheinz” (2018) and “Auf sie mit Gebruell!” (2019). Studied political science in Hamburg; served as an officer in the German Navy, 1994 to 2000. Keynote speaker at re:publica 2022 on language in times of division; regular contributor to IPS Journal and Goethe-Institut publications. Biography The Turkish government refused to renew his press credentials in 2016, and with them his legal residency. Hasnain Kazim had been Der Spiegel’s Istanbul correspondent for three years. He moved his reporting on Turkey, and later on identity and migration across Europe, to Vienna. The work before and after that moment is unusually concrete. Four years as South Asia correspondent in Islamabad, three in Istanbul, a CNN Journalist Award in 2009, and a German Navy officer’s commission before any of that. For organisations trying to understand what authoritarian pressure, migration and press freedom actually look like on the ground, this is first-hand material rather than commentary. The second arc of the career is what makes him useful in a room of executives. Since 2018, as a full-time author with Penguin Verlag, he has built a public method for responding to hostility. “Post von Karlheinz” collected his replies to racist and abusive reader mail, became a long-running bestseller, and turned him into a case study for the Dangerous Speech Project. “Auf sie mit Gebruell!” followed, a rhetorical handbook for arguing with populists without surrendering the tone. That body of work gives him something most geopolitics speakers do not have: a practical grammar for how leaders, communications teams and frontline staff should actually speak in a climate where silence reads as complicity and escalation damages the brand. He writes and speaks in German and English, and works as both keynote speaker and moderator for events that need a single serious voice to carry the evening. Key speaking topics Counterspeech and responding to online hostility Language, polarisation and public discourse Migration, identity and integration in Europe Populism, extremism and democratic resilience Press freedom and authoritarian pressure Germany, Turkey and South Asia in geopolitical context Ideal for CHROs and internal-communications leaders dealing with polarisation inside the workforce. External communications, public affairs and brand teams briefing leaders on migration, identity and reputational risk. Boards and executive committees at European-headquartered organisations working through integration, DEI or social-cohesion questions in their markets. Conference organisers and awards committees looking for a serious bilingual moderator or host. Audience outcomes A concrete method for replying to hostile or abusive communication, drawn from a published and tested body of practice. A clearer read on how language choices in internal and external communication either defuse or deepen division. First-hand perspective on Turkey, South Asia and migration into Europe from someone who reported on them under pressure. A sharper sense of what leaders can say in public on contested social questions without conceding ground to populism.

Why organisations work with Hayley Barnard Two decades advising executive boards at Microsoft, HSBC, Roche, Mercedes-Benz, Deloitte and Lidl on how inclusion changes the decisions leaders actually make about hiring and promotion. Through Mix Works, her 2025 AI and culture transformation firm, she advises leaders on responsible AI adoption and on where bias enters both human and machine decisions. Treats bias as a decision-quality problem, so leaders leave with checks they can apply in the next hiring round or AI deployment rather than a values statement. Uses her own endurance record, a solo English Channel swim and a Baffin Island traverse, as working material on decision-making under pressure. Co-designed the LeasePlan Women’s Arctic Challenge, a gender-balance campaign that ran as a verifiable all-female expedition. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Mix Diversity Developers (2014); founder and CEO, Mix Works (2025), an AI and culture transformation firm. Founder of MixLEARN, a digital DEI learning platform. Non-Executive Director, YHA; Trustee, UFI VocTech Trust (appointed March 2025). Clients include Microsoft, HSBC, Roche, Mercedes-Benz, Deloitte, Capital One, Lidl, Diageo, GSK, Virgin Media and Vodafone. Co-led the LeasePlan Women’s Arctic Challenge across Baffin Island, a DEI campaign built on a live all-female expedition. Solo English Channel swim (14h 12m, no wetsuit); 20 Bridges 46km Manhattan Island swim. Biography A hiring manager shortens a shortlist. A committee weighs two candidates for promotion. Increasingly, a screening tool ranks the first round before any human sees it. The biases that shaped those calls for decades are now being trained into the systems meant to remove them. This is the territory Hayley Barnard has worked in for two decades. As founder and CEO of Mix Diversity, the consultancy she started in 2014, she advises boards at Microsoft, HSBC, Roche, Mercedes-Benz and Lidl on inclusive leadership, unconscious bias and gender balance. The brief is operational: change how decisions get made, not add another module to the intranet. In 2025 she founded Mix Works to take that question into AI. The firm helps enterprises adopt AI responsibly and examines where bias enters automated decisions, the issue leaders now face as hiring and performance tools move into machine hands. It extends twenty years of work on human judgement into how machines make the call. Her route in was unusual. She ran Sir Chay Blyth’s Challenge Business at 23 and co-led the LeasePlan Women’s Arctic Challenge, an all-female Baffin Island traverse that doubled as the company’s gender-balance campaign. The throughline is decision-making under fatigue and pressure, the same problem on an ice cap as in a promotion committee. She has since swum the English Channel solo, no wetsuit, in 14 hours and 12 minutes. Key speaking topics Bias in human and AI-driven decisions Responsible AI adoption and governance Inclusive leadership Decision quality and fairness Gender balance and women’s leadership pipelines Leadership resilience under pressure Cross-cultural team performance Ideal for Executive boards and CEO-level teams setting direction on inclusion and on responsible AI. CHROs, CPOs and heads of talent accountable for hiring and promotion outcomes. Leadership teams introducing AI into hiring, performance or customer decisions. International Women’s Day and gender-balance programmes at enterprise scale. Audience outcomes A read on where bias enters their decisions, including the ones now made by AI tools, with the moments named. Behavioural checks leaders can apply in the next hiring or promotion cycle. Questions to ask before trusting an AI-driven hiring or performance decision. A commercial case for gender balance that holds up in a board conversation. Language to challenge inclusion theatre without stalling real change.

Why organisations work with Heather Moyse She has competed at Olympic level in three sports she did not start as a child, including learning bobsleigh from scratch and winning gold in her first Games. That gives her a credible voice on rapid capability acquisition under high stakes. Her occupational therapy training (Master’s, University of Toronto) gives her a clinical frame for human performance rather than the standard motivational-athlete narrative. She talks about the mechanics of resilience, not the feeling of it. She is the first Canadian woman inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame and one of only two Canadians inducted. The credential is rare enough to anchor a senior audience that has heard many Olympic stories. She has worked with senior corporate audiences including CIBC, BMW, Sun Life Financial, Fidelity Investments, the Royal Canadian Mint, and the Canadian Armed Forces, so the translation from sport to commercial leadership is already calibrated. Biography highlights Two-time Olympic gold medallist in women’s bobsleigh (Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014, pilot Kaillie Humphries). Four-time Olympian. World Rugby Hall of Fame, inducted 2016. First Canadian woman, second Canadian overall. Master’s in Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto. BSc (Honours Kinesiology), University of Waterloo. Author, Redefining ‘Realistic’ (2017), with foreword by John C. Maxwell. Order of Prince Edward Island (2014); inaugural Randy Starkman Olympian Humanitarian Award (2014). Biography Bobsleigh is not a sport you take up casually. Heather Moyse was recruited into the Canadian programme as an adult, learned the discipline from a standing start, and won Olympic gold in Vancouver in 2010 with pilot Kaillie Humphries. Four years later, in Sochi, the same pair defended the title. She is also a World Rugby Hall of Famer, one of two Canadians ever inducted, and competed internationally in track cycling after taking up the sport during a rugby injury recovery. Three sports, all picked up later than the orthodox path allows, all carried to international level. The story is not about innate talent. It is about how a person decides what is realistic. That decision sits at the centre of her work with organisations. Her keynote and coaching content draws on a Master’s in Occupational Therapy from the University of Toronto, which gives her a clinical vocabulary for performance most athletes do not have. She talks about how leaders narrow their own range of options under pressure, how recovery is engineered rather than waited for, and how the gap between current capability and the next required capability is closed in practice. Her book Redefining ‘Realistic’ sets out the argument in long form, with a foreword by John C. Maxwell. The corporate work, with audiences at CIBC, BMW, Sun Life Financial, Fidelity Investments, the Royal Canadian Mint, the Canadian Armed Forces and others, applies it to leaders who are being asked to recalibrate their assumptions about what their teams can do, and how quickly. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under pressure High-performance mindset and recovery Resilience as an operational discipline Goal-setting and capability acquisition Leading through uncertainty and setback Personal accountability and authentic leadership Ideal for Executive leadership teams facing prolonged change or post-restructure recovery Sales and commercial leadership audiences where sustained performance under pressure is the central question Senior women’s leadership programmes and high-potential development cohorts Conferences where the closing keynote needs an authority voice on composure and reinvention Audience outcomes A direct account of how elite performers manage themselves before, during, and after high-stakes moments A working definition of what counts as “realistic” and how that judgment limits or extends what teams attempt Specific tools for breaking large objectives into the next executable step under time pressure A clearer view of how recovery and preparation interact, drawn from Olympic-level practice rather than metaphor

Why organisations work with Heinz-Harald Frentzen Ten seasons in Formula One across Sauber, Williams, Jordan, Prost and Arrows give him a first-hand account of how winning operations differ from losing ones at the same level of talent and budget. He finished second in the 1997 Drivers’ Championship and third in 1999 with Jordan, in both cases against better-resourced rivals. The lesson he carries into a room is about execution, not hierarchy. His HHF hybrid racing project, which completed the first fully electric lap of the Nordschleife at the 2008 Nurburgring 24 Hours, gives him a credible voice on sustainable engineering as a performance problem, not a compliance one. He is comfortable in both motivational and technical registers, which is unusual for an ex-driver. Engineering and R&D audiences get substance; commercial audiences get the human story behind it. Biography highlights Formula One driver from 1994 to 2003 for Sauber, Williams, Jordan, Prost and Arrows. Runner-up in the 1997 Formula One World Drivers’ Championship with Williams. Three Grand Prix wins: San Marino 1997, French 1999 and Italian 1999. Finished third in the 1999 Drivers’ Championship with Jordan on 54 points, with two wins and six podiums. Conceived and built the HHF hybrid race car, which recorded the first electric lap of the Nurburgring Nordschleife during the 2008 24 Hours race. Winner of the ROC Legends Cup at the 2011 Race of Champions; raced in DTM from 2004 to 2006 and competed at the 2008 24 Hours of Le Mans with Aston Martin Racing. Biography The 1997 San Marino Grand Prix was Frentzen’s first Formula One victory. It came in his debut season at Williams, against a teammate, Jacques Villeneuve, who would take the title that year. He finished the season second in the championship. It is the decision-making that sits underneath a result like that, not the result itself, that organisations bring him in to talk about. Across a decade in Formula One with Sauber, Williams, Jordan, Prost and Arrows, Frentzen operated inside five different team cultures. Some produced wins with fewer resources. Some did not. His vantage point is not the champion’s, which is often misread as pure individual brilliance. It is the vantage point of a driver who watched up close what separates a team that executes from one that does not. His most distinctive post-racing work is the HHF hybrid project. Using a Gumpert Apollo chassis and a battery system he developed himself, he completed the first fully electric lap of the Nurburgring Nordschleife at the 2008 24 Hours, co-driving with Dirk Muller. Gearbox failures kept the car out of the classification, but the hybrid powertrain finished the race. It is one of the earlier serious attempts to treat electrification as a performance engineering problem in endurance racing. That combination of cockpit experience and hands-on technical development is what he draws on now. Audiences get a specific account of how sharp teams make sharp decisions under time pressure, and what it takes to keep a programme moving when the technology, the strategy and the people all have to improve at once. Key speaking topics Decision-making under time pressure High-performance team dynamics Leadership lessons from Formula One Sustainable engineering and hybrid technology Resilience and focus in elite performance Risk, trust and communication in high-stakes environments Ideal for Executive leadership offsites and board awaydays focused on performance culture Engineering, R&D and innovation functions in automotive, mobility and advanced manufacturing Sales kick-offs and annual conferences wanting a credible motorsport voice alongside business content After-dinner and gala audiences where racing pedigree adds weight to the evening Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how elite motorsport teams align driver, engineer and strategist in real time A sharper view of what separates teams that execute under pressure from teams that do not Useable lessons on focus, preparation and trust, grounded in named races and named teams A credible perspective on hybrid and electrified engineering as a performance discipline, not a compliance exercise

Why organisations work with Helen Richardson-Walsh A first-hand account of the cultural reset that took GB women’s hockey from Olympic underachievers to Rio 2016 gold, told by a senior player who was inside the leadership group for 11 years. A working performance psychologist’s view of how psychological safety, belonging and honest feedback are engineered in a daily training environment, drawn from her current role with Tottenham Hotspur Women. A credible voice on mental health at the top of high-pressure environments, grounded in her own documented recovery from clinical depression and career-threatening back surgery between London 2012 and Rio 2016. A practical perspective on inclusion as a performance variable, informed by being part of the first same-sex married couple to win Olympic gold on the same team and the cultural work that made that possible inside the squad. Co-author of “Winning Together” (Hachette, 2020), a book leaders cite as a tactical, behaviour-level account of building a winning team, not a memoir. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, Rio 2016, with Team GB women’s hockey; one of only two players to score in the shootout that beat the Netherlands in the final. Youngest woman ever to represent GB hockey at an Olympic Games, on debut at Sydney 2000, aged 18. Olympic bronze, London 2012; European champion, 2015; 293 caps for England and Great Britain across four Olympic Games. MBE for services to hockey, 2017 New Year Honours. Co-author of “Winning Together: An Olympic-Winning Approach to Building Better Teams” (Hachette, 2020), with Kate Richardson-Walsh. Performance Psychologist with Tottenham Hotspur Women since 2021; holds a Master’s in Organisational Psychology from City, University of London, and trains as a sport psychologist with elite teams. Biography GB women’s hockey arrived at London 2012 with a bronze medal and an open question about whether the squad could ever win at the level its talent suggested. The four years that followed were not a story of more training. They were a story of a deliberate cultural rebuild: explicit team values, leadership shared across the senior players, hard conversations about behaviour, and a willingness to treat psychology as a daily performance system. Rio 2016 produced the first Olympic gold for British women’s hockey. Helen Richardson-Walsh made her Olympic debut at Sydney 2000 as the youngest woman ever to represent GB hockey, and sat inside that leadership group for 11 of her 18 years in the squad. Her experience is unusually specific. Between the two Olympics she also went through two ruptured discs, multiple back and ankle surgeries, and a period of clinical depression severe enough to require professional treatment. The Rio gold was won by a player who had been told she might not play again, who had used therapy and mindfulness to come back, and who was one of only two players to score in the shootout that won the final against the Netherlands. That combination of operating inside an elite team culture and rebuilding her own performance from the inside is the content she now works with. She is co-author, with Kate Richardson-Walsh, of “Winning Together” (Hachette, 2020), a working manual on team building drawn directly from the Rio cycle. She is a Performance Psychologist with Tottenham Hotspur Women, where her brief includes individual mindset work and squad culture, and she holds a Master’s in Organisational Psychology from City, University of London. For senior teams the value is in the precision of her examples. How psychological safety actually shows up in a meeting. What belonging looks like when a married couple are competing for the same shirt. How a high performer talks about depression without losing their place in the team. What inclusion does to performance when the pressure is on. The credibility is the medal; the substance is what she did to get there and what she does now. Key speaking topics High-performance team culture Psychological safety and belonging Inclusion in elite performance environments Resilience after injury, setback and depression Mental health and wellbeing at senior level Leadership inside high-pressure teams Performance mindset Ideal for CHROs, heads of talent and culture leads building team norms in pressured commercial environments. Executive teams and senior leadership groups going through performance reset or post-restructure rebuild. Wellbeing, DEI and people leaders working on inclusion and psychological safety as performance issues, not compliance. Sales, trading floor and operating leadership groups where sustained pressure is the working environment. Audience outcomes A concrete account of how an elite team rebuilt its culture in four years, with the specific behaviours that changed. A working definition of psychological safety drawn from a team where the cost of getting it wrong was visible in performance. Language for talking about mental health and recovery at senior level without softening or sensationalising it. A view of inclusion as a performance variable, not a values statement. Practical mental tools used by elite athletes that translate to commercial high-pressure roles.