Resilience & Stress Management

Why organisations work with Scott Burrows A first-person account of recovery from a C6-C7 spinal cord injury that translates directly into how individuals make decisions when their assumptions collapse, not a generic resilience metaphor. Vision, Mindset, Grit, the framework behind his book of the same name, gives sales and leadership teams a simple shared language for goal-setting, response to rejection and persistence through downturn. Rare combination of elite-athlete background (Florida State football under Bobby Bowden, ESPN-broadcast kickboxing) and elite commercial performance (Million Dollar Round Table qualifier), which gives the talk credibility with sales and financial services audiences specifically. Track record with Fortune 500 buyers including Prudential, JPMorgan Chase, SAP, Thermo Fisher, Walgreens and Coca-Cola, and with national association audiences across healthcare, insurance and financial services. Biography highlights Walk-on wide receiver at Florida State University under head coach Bobby Bowden. Black-belt kickboxing champion whose final fight was broadcast on ESPN. Survived a car accident on 3 November 1984 that fractured the C6 and C7 vertebrae and left him paralysed from the chest down at age 19. Returned to higher education and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Finance. Qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table during a career in insurance and financial services. Author of Vision, Mindset, Grit: How to Stand Up When Life Paralyzes You; co-founder of a golf course fertiliser business operating in Southeast Asia. Biography Elite athletes are taught to hold their composure under physical pressure. What they are rarely taught is what happens when the body itself becomes the constraint. On 3 November 1984, a car accident left Scott Burrows, then a Florida State University walk-on wide receiver under Bobby Bowden and a black-belt kickboxing champion whose last fight had been broadcast on ESPN, with two broken vertebrae in his neck and a quadriplegia diagnosis at 19. The interest for senior audiences is not the diagnosis. It is what he did with the years after it. He returned to higher education, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Finance, and competed in wheelchair rugby, the Paralympic discipline known as Murderball. He then built a career in insurance and financial services that qualified him for the Million Dollar Round Table, the global standard reserved for the top tier of life insurance and financial services producers. That commercial record matters because it is what makes the keynote land in front of revenue-carrying teams. Vision, Mindset, Grit, the title of his bestselling book and the spine of his talks, is a personal-leadership framework that names the three things he had to rebuild deliberately: a goal worth pursuing, a way of thinking that could absorb setbacks, and the daily discipline to keep moving when the original plan was no longer available. He has used that material with audiences at Prudential, JPMorgan Chase, SAP, Thermo Fisher, Walgreens, Coca-Cola and a long list of national associations across healthcare, insurance and financial services. The talk is most useful for organisations going through a period in which the previous playbook has stopped working and leaders need their people to keep performing while a new one is being written. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after setback Peak performance under pressure Sales performance and overcoming rejection Goal-setting and personal leadership Adapting to industry change Mindset and motivation for commercial teams Ideal for Sales kick-offs, top-producer summits and incentive events, particularly in insurance, financial services and healthcare Leadership offsites where senior teams are navigating restructure, market shift or sustained pressure National association annual conferences seeking a credible opening or closing keynote on resilience and performance All-hands and town-hall settings during periods of significant organisational change Audience outcomes A shared language, Vision, Mindset, Grit, that teams can carry back into pipeline reviews, goal-setting and one-to-ones A reset on how individuals respond to rejection, missed targets and unexpected setback Specific examples of how to hold composure and decision quality when external conditions deteriorate Renewed energy and commitment heading into a sales cycle, fiscal year or strategic reset

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why organisations work with Sara Ross A named, proprietary framework. LeadFULL gives leadership teams a shared operating language for shifting out of effort management and into capacity management, grounded in her own multi-year workplace vitality research. A book with a thesis, not a brand. Dear Work, Something Has to Change sets out a specific argument about why current wellbeing interventions fail and what replaces them, which gives leaders something to act on after the keynote. Independent recognition from credible bodies. Global Gurus Top 30 Motivational Speakers (2025) and SUCCESS Magazine’s 2023 Woman of Influence place her on lists that buyers use for shortlist defence. A working track record with high-pressure organisations. Microsoft, Cisco, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, FedEx, and the U.S. Navy SEALs have used her work in environments where the cost of burnout is operational, not just cultural. Biography highlights Founder and Chief Vitality Officer, BrainAMPED, a leadership research firm. Author of the bestselling Dear Work, Something Has to Change, built on a multi-year workplace vitality study. Global Gurus Top 30 Motivational Speakers, 2025. 2023 Woman of Influence, SUCCESS Magazine. Former Vice President and Global Head of Leadership Innovation, Research and Education at a global leadership development firm. Guest lecturer in executive leadership programmes at Smith College; client work includes Microsoft, Cisco, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, FedEx, Deloitte, and the U.S. Navy SEALs. Biography Wellbeing has been a corporate priority for a decade, and most senior teams are no closer to fixing the underlying problem. Capable people are still leaving, performance is still uneven, and the cost of fatigue is now showing up in decisions, not just disengagement scores. Sara Ross’s work begins with that observation. She is the founder of BrainAMPED, a leadership research firm, and author of Dear Work, Something Has to Change, which draws on her own multi-year study of workplace vitality. The book makes a specific argument: leaders have been taught to manage effort, when what now matters is managing state. Capacity, not endurance, becomes the operating variable. Out of that research she built LeadFULL, a framework she uses with senior teams to translate the argument into practical leadership behaviour. It sits at the intersection of emotional intelligence, behavioural science, and organisational culture, areas she has worked in for close to two decades, most recently as a global head of leadership innovation before founding BrainAMPED. The work has earned external validation. Global Gurus placed her on its Top 30 Motivational Speakers list for 2025, and SUCCESS Magazine named her a Woman of Influence in 2023. Her client roster runs from Microsoft, Cisco, and PepsiCo through to the U.S. Navy SEALs, organisations where the consequences of running people on empty are not abstract. Key speaking topics Workplace vitality and sustainable high performance Leadership in the age of burnout and fatigue Emotional intelligence at senior levels Building team and personal resilience The future of work and hybrid-era engagement Confidence, recovery, and decision-making under pressure Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning engagement and wellbeing strategy beyond the wellness vendor cycle. CEOs and senior leadership teams worried about leadership fatigue and the cost of sustained operational pressure. Heads of leadership development running flagship programmes for senior and high-potential leaders. Women’s leadership networks and conference programmes where the brief is substance over inspiration. Audience outcomes A clear, named distinction between managing effort and managing state, and why the second is the strategic variable. Specific leadership behaviours that reduce fatigue without lowering performance expectations. A practical reading of why current wellbeing initiatives stall, and what shifts the curve. Language senior teams can use with each other to talk about capacity, recovery, and sustained output without it sounding soft.

Why organisations work with Ashley Rhodes-Courter A clinical credential behind the personal story. She is an LCSW running a mental health agency, the Foundation for Sustainable Families, which means her work on resilience and wellbeing is grounded in clinical practice, not motivational framing. A specific account of what trauma-informed care looks like in real institutions. Nine years across 14 foster placements gives her a rare credibility on systems that fail vulnerable people, and on what it takes to redesign them. Authority on schools, social services, and helping professions. Her talks for educators and frontline workers address abuse identification, burnout, and self-care with the precision of a practitioner, not a guest speaker. A New York Times bestselling memoir used in college curricula nationally, plus a published children’s book on a transgender sibling listed on the 2022 ALA Rainbow Book List. The body of work is taught, not just sold. Biography highlights New York Times bestselling author of Three Little Words (Simon & Schuster, 2008), with sequel Three More Words and the picture book Sam Is My Sister (Albert Whitman & Company, 2021). Licensed Clinical Social Worker. MSW from the University of Southern California; undergraduate degree from Eckerd College. Founder of the Foundation for Sustainable Families, a non-profit mental health agency providing trauma-informed care. Featured on CNN, Good Morning America, Today, The New York Times, USA Today, and Glamour, including selection as one of Glamour’s Top Ten College Women and to USA Today’s All-USA Academic Team. Profiled on NBC’s Women of Worth (December 2021). Sam Is My Sister included on the American Library Association’s 2022 Rainbow Book List. Biography Most public conversations about resilience treat it as a personal trait. In organisations that depend on people doing emotionally demanding work, teachers, social workers, healthcare staff, HR leaders, that framing breaks down. Resilience is built or eroded by systems, supervision, and the quality of care that workers themselves receive. Ashley Rhodes-Courter’s work begins from that point. She is unusual among speakers on this subject in holding the credential that matches the content. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a Master’s from the University of Southern California, she runs the Foundation for Sustainable Families, a mental health agency providing trauma-informed care. The clinical work informs the talks, and the talks track current practice rather than stories from a decade ago. Her authority on the subject is also biographical. Three Little Words, published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, traces nine years across 14 foster placements in Florida. The book began as an essay in The New York Times Magazine, became a New York Times bestseller, and is now used in collegiate social work and education programs. Three More Words extends the account into adulthood and adoptive parenting. Sam Is My Sister, her 2021 picture book with Albert Whitman, was placed on the American Library Association’s 2022 Rainbow Book List. The combination matters for serious buyers. A leadership team that wants a substantive session on burnout, on what schools and social services actually need from staff, or on inclusion as a duty of care, gets a speaker who has lived inside failing systems and now treats people inside the current ones. The argument is not that adversity creates strength. It is that institutions decide whether the people inside them recover or break. Key speaking topics Trauma-informed leadership and organisational practice Burnout and self-care in helping professions Resilience after adverse experience Foster care, child welfare, and adoption Mental health in the workplace Inclusion and family diversity Educator and frontline-worker wellbeing Ideal for CHROs, heads of wellbeing, and people leaders designing trauma-informed support Education sector leaders, district superintendents, and school principals Healthcare, social care, and non-profit boards DEI and inclusion leads working on family diversity and lived-experience inclusion Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of trauma-informed practice and what it asks of managers Specific signals of burnout and abuse that frontline staff and leaders can act on A frame for resilience that holds institutions, not only individuals, accountable A more confident vocabulary for inclusion conversations involving family identity and lived experience

Why organisations work with Peter Baines His authority on crisis leadership is operational, not theoretical. He led international forensic teams in Thailand after the Boxing Day tsunami and held senior roles in the response to the Bali bombings, the 2010 Jeddah floods and the 2011 Japan tsunami. He is one of the very few speakers who can talk credibly about leading in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear risk, having led an Interpol counter terrorism project on CBRN threats in Lyon. He brings a 20-year, AUD 40 million case study in purpose at scale through Hands Across the Water, which lets him talk about values, culture and CSR with real numbers behind him rather than slogans. He has published with Wiley twice on the substance of his work, Doing Good By Doing Good (2014) and Leadership Matters (2023), giving organisations a coherent body of thinking to engage with beyond the keynote. He carries an Order of Australia Medal and a royal Thai honour, which gives the talk a level of public standing that lands credibly with boards, philanthropic committees and senior leadership audiences. Biography highlights 22-year career as a forensic investigator with NSW Police, including leadership roles in the response to the 2002 Bali bombings and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand Seconded to Interpol in Lyon to lead an international counter terrorism project on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats Founder of Hands Across the Water, an Australian charity that has raised more than AUD 40 million for children in Thailand since 2005 Awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2014 for international humanitarian work, and the Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn by the King of Thailand in 2016 Author of four books, including Doing Good By Doing Good (Wiley, 2014), Leadership Matters (Wiley, 2023), and Together We Can: 33 Marathons in 26 Days (2025) In December 2024, ran 1,400 km across Thailand in 26 days, the equivalent of 33 marathons, in support of Hands Across the Water Biography The bodies were still being recovered in Thai temples when the question of leadership stopped being abstract. In the weeks after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the Australian and international forensic teams operating out of Phuket and Khao Lak had to identify thousands of victims with limited infrastructure, exhausted personnel and grieving families waiting for answers. The leader running multiple rotations of that operation was a NSW Police forensic investigator on secondment. That investigator was Peter Baines. By the time he resigned from the force in 2009, he had also worked through the Bali bombings, been seconded to Interpol in Lyon to run an international counter terrorism project on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats, and worked with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Southeast Asia. The Saudi government later engaged him to review the response to the Jeddah floods. He was deployed again after the 2011 Japan tsunami. The leadership argument he draws from that work is simple but unfashionable: authority comes from how you behave when nobody is keeping score, and culture is what survives a bad day. He set out to test it in practice. In 2005, he founded Hands Across the Water, an Australian charity that has now raised more than AUD 40 million for children in Thailand and supported 46 of them through university degrees. He has written it up in two Wiley books, Doing Good By Doing Good (2014) and Leadership Matters (2023), and most recently in Together We Can (2025), the account of his 1,400 km, 26-day run across Thailand at age 57. The Order of Australia Medal and the King of Thailand’s Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn followed, but the real proof point is that the operation he started in a tent of orphaned children in 2005 is still functioning, and growing, twenty years later. Key speaking topics Leadership in crisis and disaster response Decision-making under uncertainty and operational pressure Purpose-driven leadership and culture Corporate social responsibility and shared value Resilience and recovery after shock Building and sustaining high performing teams Storytelling and humanitarian impact Ideal for Boards and executive committees rebuilding leadership credibility after a crisis, restructuring, or reputational shock CHROs, CSOs and culture leads designing values-based leadership programmes with substance behind them CSR, sustainability and foundation leads who need a credible voice on shared value and authentic purpose Senior leadership offsites and partner conferences in professional services, financial services and complex operating environments Audience outcomes A clearer view of what authority actually looks like when titles, scripts and procedures stop helping Specific reference points for decision-making under fatigue, ambiguity and public scrutiny A practical model for connecting organisational purpose to measurable community outcomes, not slogans Renewed appetite to hold leadership teams to a higher standard of behaviour in ordinary, not just exceptional, conditions A repertoire of concrete stories, tested in disaster response and humanitarian work, that senior leaders can carry into their own teams

Why organisations work with Julian Placino Practitioner credibility: nearly two decades inside corporate recruiting, including seven years leading talent acquisition at Bottle Rocket, a Dallas mobile development firm with an outsized reputation for hiring quality. Operating-level content. His recruiting talks address the working mechanics buyers ask about: employer value proposition, candidate pipeline, referral systems, hiring manager discipline. Not HR theory. Doubles as a host. With 220+ episodes of The Pathways to Success podcast under his belt, he is comfortable interviewing leaders on stage and moderating panels, useful when an event needs both a keynote and a host. Personal-brand and resilience material that translates for sales, recruiting, and frontline audiences who need a motivational anchor rather than a leadership framework. Biography highlights Former Head of Recruiting, Bottle Rocket (seven-year tenure) Earlier recruiting leadership at ReachLocal (Gannett) Founder, Pathways Media and the Recruitment Masterclass training programme Host and creator, The Pathways to Success podcast (220+ episodes, Apple Podcasts and Spotify) BBA, University of North Texas Commercial actor and voice-over artist with named campaigns including Microsoft, Indeed, Ford, AT&T, and the NFL Biography Most companies treat recruiting as an administrative function until a critical hire stalls. Then it becomes a board-level problem. Placino built his career inside that gap. As Head of Recruiting at Bottle Rocket, he spent seven years scaling a hiring operation at a Dallas mobile development firm whose product work for Fortune 500 clients depended on the quality of its engineering bench. That operating background is what he brings to the stage. His core keynote, Mastering the Talent Puzzle, treats employer brand and recruiting strategy as a system that can be deliberately built, not a function of headcount or agency spend. The argument is grounded in what worked inside a high-pressure tech recruiting environment, including how to design an employment value proposition, how to mobilise existing employees as a pipeline, and how to make hiring managers accountable for the people they bring in. Beyond the recruiting material, Placino runs The Pathways to Success podcast, where he has interviewed more than 220 leaders across business, sport, and the creative industries. The format gives him a working interviewer’s craft, which he extends into event hosting and panel moderation. He also delivers talks on personal branding, resilience, and stewardship, drawn from his own path as a first-generation Filipino American who built a recruiting career, a media company, and a parallel commercial acting line that includes Microsoft, Indeed, Ford, AT&T, and NFL campaigns. He is based in Dallas and holds a BBA from the University of North Texas. He is represented by multiple bureaus across the US in addition to Speakers Associates internationally. Key speaking topics Recruitment strategy and employer brand Talent acquisition operating models Personal branding and reputation Resilience and adaptability Stewardship-based leadership Event hosting and interview-format moderation Ideal for CHROs and Heads of Talent Acquisition rebuilding in-house recruiting capability Talent and recruiting team offsites Sales and revenue kickoffs that need a personal-brand or motivation anchor Conferences requiring a keynote speaker who can also host or moderate Audience outcomes A working model for designing an employer value proposition that survives contact with the labour market A specific approach to turning current employees into a recruiting pipeline Language for separating personal brand from job title, useful for sales and client-facing roles A reframing model for adversity and change drawn from the speaker’s own career history