Resilience & Stress Management speakers

Why organisations work with James Davies He brings elite sport recovery practice directly into the office: the same posture, mobility and recovery principles used with Team GB track and field athletes at Rio 2016, translated for people sitting at desks. He treats physical wellbeing as measurable behaviour change, not inspiration. Audiences leave with specific stretches, ergonomic fixes and microbreak routines they can run the next morning. His client work with Hugo Lloris, Marcus Smith and performers in music and television gives him a credible way to talk about performance under pressure without drifting into motivational abstraction. As author of the Sunday Times bestseller “Body” (HarperCollins), he has already distilled his method for a general reader, which makes the keynote version land quickly with mixed corporate audiences. His patronage of STAMMA and his own experience of stammering give the session a personal register when the brief calls for resilience or human story, without the profile depending on it. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Rising Health, a London-based osteopathy and performance practice established in 2009. Team therapist for Team GB track and field athletes at the Rio 2016 Olympics. Sunday Times bestselling author of “Body: Simple Techniques and Strategies to Heal, Reset and Restore” (HarperCollins, 2022). Trained as an osteopath at the British School of Osteopathy; earlier study in massage and sports injuries at the London School of Massage. Patron of STAMMA, the British Stammering Association. Clinical base at the South Kensington Club, London; client work spans Premiership football, international rugby, Olympic athletics, music and television. Biography Most corporate wellbeing talks leave people nodding and then returning to the same chair, the same screen, the same tight shoulders by Thursday. Davies works the other way round. His starting point is the body in front of him, and a short list of things that actually change how it feels. That practical bias comes from two decades of hands-on clinical work. He trained as an osteopath at the British School of Osteopathy, founded Rising Health in 2009, and built a client list that runs from Premiership footballers and Olympic track and field athletes to performers who cannot afford to be injured before a tour. In 2016 he was selected as a team therapist for Team GB at the Rio Olympics. The same method is now available to general readers. His book “Body: Simple Techniques and Strategies to Heal, Reset and Restore” was published by HarperCollins in 2022 and reached the Sunday Times bestseller list. It is a recovery manual written for people who do not have a physio on call, which is exactly the audience most organisations are trying to reach when they commission a wellbeing keynote. He is also Patron of STAMMA, the British Stammering Association, and speaks openly about his own stammer when a brief calls for a resilience thread. The clinical substance stays the primary reason buyers bring him in: a clinician who can stand in front of five hundred employees, give them three things to do on Monday, and have them feel the difference by the end of the week. Key speaking topics Workplace physical wellbeing and pain prevention Posture, ergonomics and desk-based health Recovery habits from elite sport Sustainable performance under pressure Sleep, stress and physical resilience Movement and mobility for sedentary workforces Ideal for HR, People and Wellbeing leaders commissioning a credible physical health keynote for a wider wellbeing programme Internal communications and employee experience teams running conferences, offsites or return-to-office events Leadership and high-performance teams in sales, trading, consulting or law where sustained intensity is the job Event organisers looking for a practical clinical voice alongside mental health and nutrition speakers Audience outcomes Specific daily habits for posture, mobility and microbreaks that work in an office or at home A clearer sense of how elite athletes structure recovery, and which parts of it translate to desk work Confidence to spot early warning signs of back, neck and shoulder strain before they become absence A short, memorable set of techniques for sleep, breathing and stress discharge A personal story about stammering that gives resilience content a human anchor when the brief calls for it

Why organisations work with James Ketchell His credibility is forensically specific: two verified world firsts – completing what media dubbed the “Ultimate Triathlon” and the first FAI-ratified gyroplane circumnavigation of the globe – give his message about incremental progress a factual foundation that generic resilience content cannot match. The “ten steps at a time” approach he developed on Everest and has applied across five major expeditions gives teams a transferable, named model for breaking complex goals into sustained, manageable action – not a metaphor, but a method he has stress-tested at altitude, at sea, and in the air. His backstory runs in the opposite direction to most adventure speakers: teenage depression, no school qualifications, fired from five jobs, and a motorcycle accident that threatened permanent disability. That starting point makes his message about potential accessible to audiences who do not identify with elite athletic backgrounds. He has spoken at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, PwC, GSK, eBay, and RBS – organisations that set a high bar for relevance and credibility. His ability to adapt the same core content to military leadership, financial services, and pharma audiences is verified across named client feedback. Biography highlights First and only person to complete the “Ultimate Triathlon”: solo Atlantic row (2010), Everest summit (2011), unsupported 18,000-mile global cycle (2013–14) Guinness World Record holder: first person to circumnavigate the globe in an open-cockpit gyroplane, certified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (2019) Winner of the Royal Automobile Club’s Segrave Trophy (2020), awarded for outstanding skill, courage and initiative Author of two books: The Ultimate Triathlon (2016, endorsed by Bear Grylls) and It’s All Mental (2021) UK Scouting Ambassador; ambassador for children’s charity Over The Wall Speaking clients include eBay, PwC, GSK, RBS, and Sandhurst Royal Military Academy Biography James Ketchell is the only person to have rowed solo across the Atlantic, summited Everest, and cycled 18,000 miles around the world – a sequence the media named the “Ultimate Triathlon” – and in 2019 became the first person to fly an open-cockpit gyroplane around the globe, a journey of 24,000 nautical miles in 175 days, ratified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale and recognised by Guinness World Records. The Royal Automobile Club awarded him the Segrave Trophy for the achievement in 2020. None of this was a trajectory anyone predicted. Ketchell left school without qualifications, was fired from five jobs, struggled with depression as a teenager, and in 2008 sustained a motorcycle accident that left him with broken legs, a shattered ankle, and a prognosis of permanent disability. His response to that diagnosis became the architecture of everything that followed: break the goal into the smallest possible steps, prioritise ruthlessly, and keep moving. The principle he articulates most precisely came at 8,000 metres on Everest – the last few hundred metres completed ten steps at a time. That isn’t a metaphor he applies to business; it is a documented method he has used to cross oceans, cycle continents, and fly around the world. His second book, It’s All Mental, makes the case that the obstacles to extraordinary performance are almost never physical. His talks draw on five major expeditions, two mid-ocean rescues, and a recovery from near-permanent disability to give organisations something they rarely get from a speaker: a framework for sustained performance that has been tested at the point of actual failure. The organisations that bring him in – PwC, GSK, eBay, Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, RBS – are not looking for inspiration as an emotion. They are looking for something their teams can use. Ketchell delivers that. Key speaking topics Resilience under extreme pressure Incremental goal-setting and performance Leadership mindset and self-discipline Overcoming adversity and setback Mental toughness and sustained focus Expedition planning and risk management Ideal for Leadership teams and senior executives preparing for significant organisational change or uncertainty CHROs and L&D leads designing resilience and performance programmes Sales, commercial, and operational teams where sustained motivation and goal delivery under pressure is a strategic priority Military, emergency services, and high-stakes professional audiences (Ketchell has a verified track record with Sandhurst) Audience outcomes A named, transferable framework for breaking large or daunting goals into sustained, achievable steps A recalibrated view of setback as structural information rather than failure – drawn from Ketchell’s own documented experience of failed expeditions alongside record-breaking ones Practical language for discussing mental resilience and performance that avoids wellness cliché A reference point for goal prioritisation under resource and time constraints, developed across expeditions where those constraints were life-critical Greater confidence that high performance is method-driven, not talent-dependent

Why organisations work with James King He has applied the same performance method inside Tier One military units, hedge funds including Citadel and AKO Capital, and elite sport at the Toronto Blue Jays, Seattle Mariners and Premier League level. Few practitioners have credibility across all three worlds. His book Accelerating Excellence gives a leadership team a shared operating language for confidence, motivation, resilience and skill acquisition, drawn from primary work with outlier performers rather than from secondary research. Case studies from his work have been presented inside the MBA programmes at Oxford, Harvard, MIT and Princeton, which means his material has been pressure-tested by the most analytically demanding audiences in management education. Endorsed in named testimonials by General Stanley McChrystal, the President and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays, and the founder of Mandara Capital, which is a rare credential set across military, sport and capital markets. He treats psychological skill as something a senior team can train, not something they either have or do not, which gives executives a route into performance work without the soft language that usually accompanies it. Biography highlights Author of Accelerating Excellence: The Principles that Drive Elite Performance, published 2021. MSc in Performance Psychology, University of Edinburgh. Performance work with hedge funds including Citadel, AKO Capital and Mandara Capital, and with Norges Bank Investment Management. Performance work with elite sports organisations including the Toronto Blue Jays, Seattle Mariners, Premier League clubs and Team GB. Performance programmes inside specialist military units, including UK Special Forces and US Navy SEAL formations. Host of the Accelerating Excellence podcast and developer of the “Train the Operating System” application. Biography Most leadership teams have built their careers on capability. The next bar is composure: the ability to think, decide and recover when conditions stop cooperating. That bar is where King operates, and it is the bar he has watched outlier performers cross inside special operations, hedge fund trading floors and elite sport. His book Accelerating Excellence sets out the principles he has seen produce sustained elite performance across those settings. The argument is unfashionably specific. Confidence, motivation, resilience and rapid skill acquisition are trainable behaviours with underlying mechanisms, not personality traits. The work is grounded in his MSc in Performance Psychology from the University of Edinburgh and fifteen years of advising at the top of those domains. The list of organisations he has worked with reads as cross-disciplinary on purpose. Citadel, AKO Capital and Norges Bank Investment Management on the capital side. The Toronto Blue Jays, Seattle Mariners, Premier League clubs and Team GB on the sports side. UK Special Forces and US Navy SEAL formations on the military side. The same operating principles travel across all three. Case studies from his work have been presented at the MBA programmes at Oxford, Harvard, MIT and Princeton. He has been publicly endorsed by General Stanley McChrystal, by the President and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays, and by the founder of Mandara Capital. For a senior team trying to raise its standard of decision-making under pressure, that combination of operational depth and analytical credibility is unusual. Key speaking topics Performance psychology for senior leaders Decision-making under pressure Resilience and recovery in high-stakes environments Talent identification and accelerated skill acquisition Building elite teams Strategy and continuous improvement in competitive systems Ideal for Executive committees and boards under sustained operational pressure Investment partners and trading leadership in capital markets Heads of high-performance and senior coaches in elite sport Specialist units and leadership in defence, security and emergency services Audience outcomes A clear language for the psychological skills that separate sustained elite performers from one-off high performers A diagnostic for where their own team is leaking performance under pressure Specific principles for building confidence, motivation and resilience as trainable behaviours A faster, more deliberate model for skill acquisition than the standard 10,000-hour assumption Cross-domain reference points from military, capital markets and elite sport that travel back into their own context

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

Why organisations work with James Lawrence He carries two verifiable Guinness World Records and the only completed 100-in-100 full Ironman challenge, which gives any resilience talk an evidence base most motivational speakers cannot match. His 50.50.50 and Conquer 100 attempts are documented on film, in book form with Matt Fitzgerald, and across CNN and Sports Illustrated coverage. The story has been independently verified, so the room does not have to take it on trust. He breaks down what looks like a superhuman feat into operating mechanics that translate to working teams: daily milestones, small repeatable actions, role of the support crew, recovery as part of the work. He has a credible after-dinner and conference-stage presence built on a story arc that lands with mixed audiences, from sales kick-offs to leadership offsites. Biography highlights Two Guinness World Records: 22 half-Ironman-distance races in a year (2010/2011) and 30 full Ironman-distance races in a year (2012). Completed the 50.50.50 in 2015: 50 full Ironman-distance triathlons in 50 consecutive days across 50 US states. Completed Conquer 100 in 2021: 100 consecutive full-distance triathlons over 100 days, extended to 101, totalling 14,060 miles. Subject of the feature documentary Iron Cowboy: The Story of the 50.50.50, distributed on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video. Author of Iron Cowboy: Redefine Impossible, co-written with sports writer Matt Fitzgerald and published by Regan Arts in 2017. Conquer 100 proceeds were directed to Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-trafficking non-profit. Biography Most resilience content in the corporate market is theoretical. The work behind James Lawrence’s keynotes is not. In 2015 he completed 50 full-distance Ironman triathlons in 50 consecutive days across 50 US states. In 2021 he repeated the logic at twice the length, finishing 101 consecutive full-distance triathlons over 101 days, more than 14,000 miles of swimming, cycling and running. Both attempts are independently documented. The two events sit on top of a longer track record. He held a Guinness World Record for 22 half-Ironman races in one year, then set a second for 30 full Ironman-distance races inside a calendar year. The endurance community uses him as a reference point for what one human, supported correctly, can sustain. What he brings to a stage is not the spectacle but the system underneath it. Daily milestones rather than the total mileage. A clear support model: physiologist, athletic trainer, nutritionist, running partner, family. Recovery treated as part of the workload, not a reward for completing it. The argument transfers cleanly to teams doing long programmes of change, integration, restructuring or sustained client delivery, where the issue is not whether the goal is possible but whether anyone can keep showing up. He documented the 50.50.50 attempt in Iron Cowboy: Redefine Impossible, co-written with Matt Fitzgerald and published by Regan Arts in 2017, and in the feature documentary of the same period. Proceeds from Conquer 100 were committed to Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-trafficking non-profit. The cause framing matters: the records were not the point on their own. Key speaking topics Endurance and human performance Personal resilience under sustained pressure Goal setting and daily execution Mental strength and overcoming self-doubt Team and support-system design Leadership through long, hard programmes Ideal for Sales kick-offs and annual conferences where the year ahead is being framed as a long campaign Leadership offsites focused on resilience, burnout and sustained performance After-dinner slots at client and partner events where the audience is mixed and a strong narrative is needed Audience outcomes A concrete reference point for what disciplined daily execution looks like under fatigue A working language for breaking long, hard programmes into daily milestones A specific account of how a support system around a high performer is structured and used Renewed confidence that targets framed as impossible are often a sequence of solved daily problems

Why organisations work with Jamie Andrew He speaks from a lived reinvention most audiences will never encounter: five nights trapped on Les Droites, the loss of all four limbs, and a decade of returning to elite mountaineering, including a Matterhorn summit. His story gives wellbeing and resilience programmes something concrete to anchor to, rather than another framework slide that no one remembers after the offsite. He writes as well as he speaks. Life and Limb won the Banff Mountain Book Festival Prize for Literature, which places him in a different category from most adventure-circuit speakers. He has delivered in more than 40 countries for audiences at Microsoft, Vodafone, Roche, PepsiCo, Procter and Gamble, Toyota and Tetra Pak, which means he reads corporate rooms and adapts to them. Biography highlights Author of Life and Limb (Portrait, 2004), winner of the Banff Mountain Book Festival Prize for Literature and shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize. First quadruple amputee to summit the Matterhorn (2016), climb Mont Blanc (2002) and Kilimanjaro, and to complete the London Marathon (2001) and an Ironman triathlon. Keynote experience in more than 40 countries across five continents, with clients including Microsoft, Toyota, Vodafone, Roche, Danone, Procter and Gamble, PepsiCo and Tetra Pak. Appointed OBE for services to charity. Biography In January 1999, a storm pinned two climbers to the north face of Les Droites in the French Alps for five nights. One did not come home. The survivor, severely frostbitten, reached hospital in septic shock and lost both hands and both feet. That survivor later walked up Blackford Hill in Edinburgh, learned to run on prosthetics, and then went back to the mountains. The practical point for organisations is not the drama of the accident. It is what happened afterwards. Jamie Andrew has climbed Mont Blanc, Kilimanjaro and the Matterhorn as a quadruple amputee. He finished the London Marathon in 2001 and an Ironman triathlon. Each of those took years of structured relearning, and each required a different approach to preparation, risk, and what a team can reasonably be asked to carry. The written record matters here. Life and Limb, published by Portrait in 2004, won the Banff Mountain Book Festival Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize. It is a careful book by someone who has examined what actually held him together through rehabilitation and what did not. Andrew’s audiences tend to be in the middle of something hard: a restructure, a performance reset, a wellbeing programme that is not landing. He gives those rooms a point of reference that is not abstract. The stories are specific, the lessons are tested against a life that kept going, and the register is matter-of-fact rather than inspirational in the usual sense. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery under extreme pressure Team performance in high-stakes conditions Risk, judgement and decision-making Goal setting across long time horizons Motivation and sustained effort Change and personal reinvention Leadership through adversity Ideal for CHROs and wellbeing leads designing resilience, mental health and engagement programmes that need a credible human anchor Leadership teams navigating a major change, restructure or performance reset Sales, operations and frontline audiences where motivation and long-horizon effort are the performance issue Employee conferences, kick-offs and offsites that need a keynote the room remembers the following Monday Audience outcomes A concrete reference point for what resilience looks like when the stakes are real, not rhetorical A clearer sense of what teams owe one another when conditions deteriorate Language for talking about recovery, setbacks and reinvention without resorting to slogans A sharper view of the difference between motivation that lasts and motivation that fades by the following week

Why organisations work with Jamie Clarke He has an unusually specific evidence base for leadership under pressure: two Mount Everest summits, the Seven Summits, a 1,126 km camel crossing of the Empty Quarter, and two failed Everest attempts that shape how he talks about recovery. He is a named performance coach to the 2018 Stanley Cup winning Washington Capitals and Hockey Canada’s 2018 PyeongChang team, so his material translates into elite team environments, not just general audiences. His academic base at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business Centre for Advanced Leadership gives the work a teaching structure, not only a story arc. He pairs expedition narrative with operator experience, having built and run LiveOutThere.com through growth, a Profit Hot 50 ranking in 2013 and eventual closure, so the failure material is first-hand. His delivery is built for senior audiences that have heard every motivational speaker before; the work is about decisions under uncertainty, not summit photography. Biography highlights Summited Mount Everest on 23 May 1997 and again on 17 May 2010, after two earlier unsuccessful attempts. Completed the Seven Summits between 1993 and 2008. Crossed the Empty Quarter of Arabia by camel in 1999, a 1,126 km, 40-day expedition with brother Leigh Clarke and Bruce Kirkby. Associate adjunct professor and fellow at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, Centre for Advanced Leadership. Performance coach for the 2018 Stanley Cup winning Washington Capitals and Hockey Canada in PyeongChang 2018. Author of Everest to Arabia (2001) and co-author of The Power of Passion with Alan Hobson, later republished as Above All Else: The Everest Dream. Founder of LiveOutThere.com, ranked No. 39 on Profit Magazine’s 2013 Hot 50. Biography The second Everest attempt came apart at 8,300 metres in 1994. The team Clarke was part of had the summit in reach and turned back. He went home, rebuilt the expedition, and made the top in 1997, then returned and did it again in 2010. Two failed attempts sit on the same CV as two successful ones, and that is the part of the story he now teaches from. The work is about what teams do in the hours after the plan stops working. Clarke has built a leadership practice on specific expedition evidence rather than metaphor: the 1997 and 2010 Everest summits, the 1,126 km Empty Quarter crossing by camel in 1999, the Seven Summits completed across fifteen years, and the 2019 Mongolian motorbike traverse with his son Khobe. Each expedition produced a different failure mode, which is the material he uses with senior teams. His academic base is the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, where he is an associate adjunct professor and fellow in the Centre for Advanced Leadership. His coaching work has been with elite performance environments under real stakes, including the Washington Capitals through their 2018 Stanley Cup run and Hockey Canada at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics. Barry Trotz’s on-record comment after the Capitals won reads as a working review, not a blurb. Clarke also operated as a founder. LiveOutThere.com grew into a Profit Hot 50 retailer in 2013 and closed in 2017. He has run the inside of a business that did well and then did not, which is why the failure and recovery material in his talks sounds like first-hand accounting rather than adventure content. Key speaking topics Leadership under uncertainty Team performance in high-stakes environments Recovery after setback and failure Resilience and decision-making under stress Expedition leadership as organisational case study Culture and morale in long-cycle projects Coaching elite teams through pressure Ideal for CEOs and executive teams going into contested strategic bets Leadership development and executive education cohorts Sales and performance leaders preparing teams for long, high-pressure cycles Boards and senior groups that have already heard the standard motivational set Audience outcomes A sharper sense of how high-performing teams behave in the hours after a plan breaks. Specific expedition decisions, named and dated, that map onto organisational choices under pressure. A working language for separating recoverable setbacks from terminal ones. A clearer view of the leader’s job when morale, information and authority are all moving at once. Practical reference points drawn from elite hockey and Olympic environments, not generic motivation.

Why organisations work with Jamie Kern Lima A founder track record at a scale almost no speaker in the entrepreneurship category can match: a category-creating consumer brand sold to L’Oreal for $1.2 billion, after Sephora said no for six years and QVC said no for three. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s history, with direct operating experience inside a $30 billion strategic acquirer post-acquisition, not just pre-exit. Two New York Times bestselling books, “Believe IT” and “Worthy”, giving sales teams and leadership audiences a tested framework on rejection and self-worth that the speaker has already road-tested with millions of readers. Host of the Gracie Award-winning Jamie Kern Lima Show, with first-time podcast interviews from figures including Meghan Markle and Michelle Obama, which gives the platform reach and the speaker a sharpened interviewer’s instinct for what actually moves an audience. A Columbia MBA and Columbia Business School board member who chooses to lead with the founder story, not the credential stack. The buyer gets the substance underneath the inspiration. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of IT Cosmetics; sold to L’Oreal in 2016 for $1.2 billion. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s 100+ year history. Two-time New York Times bestselling author: “Believe IT” (Simon & Schuster, 2021) and “Worthy” (Hay House, 2024). Host of “The Jamie Kern Lima Show”, winner of the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast, Lifestyle. Guest Shark, ABC’s Shark Tank, Season 16. MBA, Columbia Business School; member of the Columbia Business School Board of Overseers. Listed on Forbes’ America’s Richest Self-Made Women. Biography IT Cosmetics was turned down by Sephora for six years and by QVC for three before Jamie Kern Lima got either retailer on the phone. By 2016 the company was the largest luxury makeup brand in America, and L’Oreal paid $1.2 billion to acquire it. She became the first female CEO of a brand in the group’s history. The founding story is unusual because the product positioning was unusual. IT Cosmetics was built around real skin: rosacea, hyperpigmentation, post-chemotherapy skin, customers QVC’s buyers were not used to seeing on camera. Kern Lima insisted on putting them there. That decision, more than any single marketing tactic, is what separated the brand from the prestige beauty pack and made it acquirable at scale. Post-exit, she has built a second platform with similar discipline. “Believe IT” and “Worthy” are both New York Times bestsellers; “The Jamie Kern Lima Show” won the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast in the lifestyle category, on the back of first-ever podcast interviews with Meghan Markle and a multi-part series with Oprah Winfrey. She is on the board of overseers at Columbia Business School, where she earned her MBA in 2004. For a corporate audience, the relevant content is concrete. How a category-creating consumer brand survives years of rejection from the gatekeepers it depends on. How founder-led marketing competes with conglomerate marketing budgets. What changes inside the business the day a $30 billion strategic acquirer owns it. What stays the same. Key speaking topics Founder-led brand building and category creation Selling to and operating inside a strategic acquirer Authenticity as a marketing operating principle Rejection as a sales and growth discipline Direct retail, on-camera selling and QVC scale-up Resilience and self-worth for senior leaders Women’s entrepreneurship at scale Ideal for Sales kick-offs, especially in consumer, retail, beauty, and direct-to-consumer categories CMOs and brand teams reframing what “authentic” marketing means in practice Founder and scale-up audiences inside corporate venture, accelerator, and women’s leadership programmes Annual conferences seeking a headline keynote with mainstream cultural reach Audience outcomes A working playbook on building demand for a consumer brand the trade buyers have already rejected A clearer framework for how founder-led companies should think about brand voice after acquisition Specific tactics on handling rejection as a recurring operational event, not a one-off setback A renewed willingness, particularly among senior women, to put their own conviction back at the centre of commercial decisions

Why organisations work with Jamie Roberts He carries 94 Wales caps, two Lions tours and a 2009 Lions Player of the Series award, with the operational vocabulary that goes with it: selection, cycle planning, recovery, accountability inside a small group. He completed a Cardiff University medical degree, a Cambridge MPhil in Medical Science and a Loughborough MBA while playing professional rugby, giving him a credible voice on dual-career discipline that most athlete speakers cannot match. As an Independent Non-Executive Director on the Welsh Rugby Union Board, he speaks from current governance experience, not retired anecdote. His autobiography Centre Stage, written with Ross Harries and published by Hodder and Stoughton, gives buyers a sourced, on-record account of the moments he draws on from stage. Biography highlights 94 Wales caps and two British and Irish Lions tours (2009, 2013); named Lions Player of the Series in South Africa, 2009. Two Six Nations Grand Slams (2008, 2012) and the 2013 Six Nations Championship title. BSc Sport and Exercise Science from Cardiff Met, MBBCh in Medicine from Cardiff University, MPhil in Medical Science from Queens’ College, Cambridge, and MBA from Loughborough University. Independent Non-Executive Director on the Welsh Rugby Union Board, appointed October 2023. Author of Centre Stage (Hodder and Stoughton, 2021), co-written with Ross Harries. Honorary Fellow of Cardiff Metropolitan University (2023); started NHS Foundation training in Cardiff and Vale Health Board in 2025. Biography Inside elite rugby, the gap between training and Test match is small, public and unforgiving. Selection lasts a week. Recovery windows are measured in hours. The same group has to perform again, in front of cameras, after the last result has been dissected on television. That is the operational world Jamie Roberts lived in for seventeen years. He won 94 caps for Wales between 2008 and 2017, lifted Grand Slams in 2008 and 2012, took the Six Nations title in 2013 and toured twice with the British and Irish Lions. On the 2009 tour to South Africa he was named Player of the Series alongside Brian O’Driscoll in midfield. Most athletes at that level commit fully and exclusively to the game. Roberts was qualifying as a doctor at the same time. He completed his medical degree at Cardiff University in 2013, an MPhil in Medical Science at Queens’ College, Cambridge in 2017 and an MBA at Loughborough in 2020. The combination is unusual and useful. It gives him a vocabulary for performance that translates easily to clinical settings, board agendas and commercial teams, without leaning on rugby metaphor. Since 2023 he has sat on the Welsh Rugby Union Board as an Independent Non-Executive Director, a role he took during a difficult period for the governing body. He began NHS Foundation training in Cardiff in 2025. His autobiography Centre Stage, written with Ross Harries, is the on-record source for the stories audiences hear from him: selection, injury, the loss of a Wales place after a decade, and what holds a senior group together when the result is public. Key speaking topics Team performance under public pressure Leadership inside elite small groups Dual-career discipline and identity Resilience after setback and reinvention Sport, medicine and governance crossovers Mental approach to high-stakes selection Ideal for Senior leadership teams under sustained external scrutiny Sales, partnership and trading floors operating on short performance cycles Healthcare, professional services and regulated organisations interested in dual-career and clinical-leader perspectives Conferences and dinners seeking a credible, articulate sports voice with substantive content beyond playing anecdote Audience outcomes A clearer view of how elite teams sustain performance across a long competitive cycle, not a single peak Practical reference points for composure when results are visible and immediate A frank account of what selection, demotion and recovery feel like inside a high-performing group Insight into how a serious second discipline can sit alongside, rather than dilute, a primary role A grounded perspective on leadership and governance from someone currently inside both clinical and rugby boardroom settings

Why organisations work with Jamil Qureshi Six individuals to world number one, five Ryder Cup captains advised, 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50. The track record in elite sport is operationally specific, not rhetorical. He has designed and embedded long-running change programmes at scale: Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Journey to World Class’, the Post Office’s separation from Royal Mail, and Marks & Spencer. He has run transformation inside organisations, not only spoken about it. He translates the psychology of sustained pressure from environments where the cost of failure is public and immediate (Premier League, Ryder Cup) into boardrooms where it usually is not. One of a small number of external psychologists invited to study astronauts on the 2008 NASA Space Programme. The framework has been pressure-tested in domains most speakers can only describe. Biography highlights First-ever official psychologist appointed to the European Ryder Cup team by captain Ian Woosnam in 2006; has since worked with five Ryder Cup captains. Has worked with 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50, with Premier League players from Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea, with Formula 1 drivers David Coulthard and Eddie Irvine, and with members of the 2009 England Ashes-winning cricket team. Designed and delivered board-level leadership and change programmes for Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, Emirates Airlines, Cisco, GSK, and Lloyds Banking Group. Author of The Mind Coach, published by Penguin, on the psychological foundations of personal and professional performance. One of a small number of external psychologists invited to study astronauts on the 2008 NASA Space Programme. Listed by GQ Magazine among the most influential figures in British sport (2009); named in The Daily Mirror’s top 100 coaches in the world (2023). Biography At the 2006 Ryder Cup at the K Club, Europe beat the United States by a record-equalling margin. Captain Ian Woosnam had done something no Ryder Cup captain had done before: he appointed an official psychologist to the team. That psychologist was Jamil Qureshi. Sport had been treating mindset as decisive for years. Most boards still treat it as a soft skill, even as senior leaders increasingly face the conditions of elite athletes: sustained scrutiny and very narrow margins for error. Qureshi has spent two decades closing that gap. He has helped six individuals reach world number one in their sport, advised five Ryder Cup captains, and worked with 22 golfers ranked inside the world top 50. Premier League players at Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea sit on the same client list as Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, Emirates Airlines, Cisco, GSK and Lloyds Banking Group. In business, the work goes well beyond keynotes. Qureshi designed and embedded leadership and change programmes for Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Journey to World Class’, the Post Office’s cultural separation from Royal Mail, and Marks & Spencer. Through Covid he ran extensive work with global leadership teams at SAS, GSK, Janssen, NHS England and Protiviti as they reset around remote and hybrid leadership. His book, The Mind Coach, published by Penguin, sets out the psychological foundations he applies in both worlds. Skill gets people to the top. What keeps them there, and what determines whether the team around them performs when it matters, is something organisations rarely build deliberately. That is what Qureshi is asked in to do. Key speaking topics Performance psychology in business High-performing teams Leadership under sustained pressure Mindset and behavioural change Cultural change and transformation Translating elite sport into business performance Hybrid and remote leadership Ideal for Boards and CEO leadership teams setting expectations for performance under sustained pressure Sales and commercial leadership teams where individual mindset shapes pipeline outcomes HR and L&D directors building leadership programmes that need psychological substance, not theory Senior leadership conferences where elite-sport credibility opens the room Audience outcomes Specific behaviours for performing under sustained pressure, drawn from how elite athletes actually train A sharper view of where individual mindset constrains team output, and what to do about it Language for leaders to talk about psychology without it sounding soft A more honest read on the gap between intent and execution in their own teams

Why organisations work with Jann Mardenborough He carries a verified outlier credential: third in the LMP2 class at the 2013 Le Mans 24 Hours, reached in two years from a Gran Turismo console with no prior motorsport background. His subject is composure after consequence. The 2015 Nürburgring crash, which killed a spectator and which he chose to allow into the Sony Pictures film, is part of what he discusses, not a fact left at the door. The Gran Turismo film, in which Archie Madekwe plays him and on which he served as co-producer and stunt driver, gives audiences immediate recognition without requiring a motorsport brief. He has operated inside two of the most demanding racing cultures in the world, Japan’s Super GT and Super Formula, where the working language and feedback loops are not built around his first language. Biography highlights Won the 2011 Nissan GT Academy, beating more than 90,000 entrants on Gran Turismo before progressing through a real-car final at Silverstone. Third in LMP2 class at the 2013 24 Hours of Le Mans with Greaves Motorsport; further Le Mans entries in 2014 and 2015, the latter with Nissan’s LMP1 programme. Second in the 2016 All-Japan Formula 3 Championship, with four wins, six poles and twelve podiums. Long Japanese career across Super GT GT300 and GT500 and Super Formula, including a GT300 win at Fuji. Co-producer, stunt driver and consultant on Gran Turismo (Sony Pictures, 2023), portrayed by Archie Madekwe. Simulator and test driver in Formula E for Nissan e.dams and McLaren (2021 to 2022); signed by HRT Ford Performance for the 2025 GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup. Biography The 2011 Nissan GT Academy final was a twenty-minute race at Silverstone in real GT cars, contested between gamers who had never sat in one. Jann Mardenborough won it by eight seconds and signed a professional racing contract the same week. He had been playing Gran Turismo since he was eight. Two years later he stood on the LMP2 podium at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. That trajectory is unusual enough on its own. What makes the story usable for senior audiences is what came after. In 2015 his Nissan GT-R Nismo left the circuit at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, cleared the catch fencing at Flugplatz and killed a spectator. He survived. He returned to racing. He later agreed to let the incident appear in the Sony Pictures Gran Turismo film, on which he was co-producer, stunt driver and consultant. The professional record sits alongside that. Second in the 2016 All-Japan Formula 3 Championship with four wins and a dozen podiums. A GT300 win at Fuji. Multiple seasons in Super GT’s top GT500 class and in Super Formula, racing inside an engineering culture that does not run on his first language. Simulator and test work in Formula E with Nissan e.dams and McLaren. A 2025 signing with HRT Ford Performance for the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup. The talk he gives is about what performance actually costs once the conditions stop being forgiving, and what a person and a team have to keep doing on the morning after a setback that is not theoretical. Few speakers in this category can address that subject from inside the event rather than at a remove. Key speaking topics High-performance under pressure Composure and recovery after setback Mindset and the transition from amateur to professional Decision-making at speed Cross-cultural performance in elite sport Digital disruption and unconventional career paths Ideal for Leadership teams preparing for high-stakes execution windows: product launches, results days, regulatory events Sales, trading and operations groups whose work is judged on consistency under pressure Talent and L&D programmes addressing resilience and career reinvention Corporate partner activations for motorsport, gaming and automotive sponsors Audience outcomes A concrete account of what changes inside a performer between an amateur ceiling and a professional one A sharper sense of what composure looks like in the hours and days after a serious setback A working frame for thinking about decision-making when feedback is immediate and consequence is high Recognition that high-performance careers are made of recoveries, not only of wins

Why organisations work with Jason Fox He speaks with the authority of someone who ran hostage rescue, counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics operations at Sergeant rank in the Special Boat Service, not someone interpreting that world from outside it. His account of complex PTSD and recovery, set out in the Sunday Times number one bestseller Battle Scars, gives senior leaders a usable frame for talking about mental health with people who will not respond to standard corporate wellbeing language. He translates the team standards that kept SBS troops alive into the behaviours that hold a leadership team together during restructures, market shocks and public failure. The vocabulary is operational, not motivational. Organisations that have put him in front of their teams get a speaker who has also led a Guinness-record Atlantic row and a 1,980-mile unsupported Yukon kayak, which means the lessons on preparation, teamwork and composure come from current practice as well as past service. Biography highlights Royal Marine Commando from age 16; Sergeant in the Special Boat Service; approximately 20 years in UK Special Forces before medical discharge in 2012. Longest-serving directing staff on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins; former directing staff on SAS Australia. Presenter of Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos, filmed in Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Author of Battle Scars (Sunday Times number one bestseller, Bantam Press) and Life Under Fire (Penguin Random House). Co-founder of Rock2Recovery, providing mental health support to serving personnel, veterans and their families. Guinness World Record holder with Team Essence for the first unsupported east-to-west Atlantic row, Lagos to Venezuela, 50 days, 2016; led an unsupported 1,980-mile Yukon River kayak expedition in 2019. Biography Hostage rescue, maritime counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics work in the Special Boat Service demand a style of leadership that most organisations only discover they lack once something has already gone wrong. Fox spent two decades inside that environment, joining the Royal Marines at sixteen and reaching Sergeant rank in the SBS before a complex PTSD diagnosis forced a medical discharge in 2012. The second half of his career has been about translating that experience into language corporate leaders can actually use. His first book, Battle Scars, reached number one on the Sunday Times list and opened a serious conversation about how elite operators break, recover and rebuild. Life Under Fire, published by Penguin Random House, sets out the team habits and personal disciplines he saw work under fire. Audiences know him from Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, where he has served as the longest-standing directing staff, and from the Channel 4 documentary series Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos, in which he reported from cartel-affected communities across Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Alongside television and writing, he co-founded Rock2Recovery with fellow former Royal Marine Jamie Sanderson to give veterans faster routes into mental health support. The adventures reinforce the argument rather than decorate it. In 2016 Fox was part of Team Essence, which set the Guinness World Record as the first team to row the Atlantic unsupported east-to-west from mainland Europe to mainland South America, 3,308 nautical miles in fifty days. In 2019 he kayaked the Yukon River, 1,980 miles unsupported, in aid of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity. Both are reference points he uses with leadership teams to make the case that composure, preparation and team trust are trained, not inherited. Key speaking topics Leadership and decision-making under extreme pressure Team performance in high-stakes environments Resilience and recovery from operational trauma Mental health and PTSD in high-performing populations Risk assessment and mission planning Accountability and standards inside elite teams Ideal for Executive and senior leadership teams navigating restructures, crisis response or reputational pressure Boards and operating committees rebuilding trust after a serious incident Safety-critical and frontline-heavy organisations (defence, energy, logistics, emergency services) where team decision-making is the core asset CHRO and wellbeing leads building a mental health programme that needs credibility with male-heavy or frontline workforces Audience outcomes A working picture of how elite military teams run planning, rehearsal and after-action review, and where those practices map onto corporate leadership A usable vocabulary for discussing mental health with people who dismiss standard wellbeing language Sharper thinking on what individual composure and team standards look like when conditions actually deteriorate A first-person account of PTSD and recovery that makes the business case for early intervention concrete rather than abstract