Resilience & Stress Management

Why organisations work with Jodie Taylor Taylor won the Golden Boot at 31, after a serious knee injury had disrupted her career in her mid-20s. The story is sustained performance through real adversity – not a single peak moment – which is what makes the resilience argument land with competitive organisations. A career spanning 17 clubs across six countries – from NWSL franchises to Lyon’s UEFA Champions League-winning squad – means direct exposure to how elite performance cultures actually differ. She brings comparative insight into what drives delivery under pressure, not a single exportable model. She is now Arsenal Women’s Technical Director – the first person to hold the role at the club – which means her thinking about the conditions for elite performance is being tested in a live organisational context, not drawn solely from memory of a playing career that ended years ago. As the first Englishwoman to score a hat-trick in a major international tournament, she carries a specific, named, verifiable performance record. That kind of credential anchors credibility differently than a career overview. A UEFA A coaching licence and an in-progress Masters in Sports Directorship mean her framework for translating athletic performance into organisational learning has structured analytical rigour behind it – a distinction that matters in leadership conversations where storytelling alone doesn’t carry the room. Biography highlights UEFA Women’s EURO 2017 Golden Boot winner – five goals in four appearances, including the first hat-trick by an Englishwoman in a major international tournament 51 England senior caps and 19 international goals; represented England at the 2015 and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cups (England won bronze in 2015) UEFA Women’s Champions League winner with Lyon (2019-20); FA Cup winner with Birmingham City (2012) Vauxhall England Player of the Year 2017; Oregon State University Athletics Hall of Fame inductee (2020) Career spanning 17 clubs across six countries – England, USA, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and France Appointed Arsenal Women’s Technical Director (January 2026) – the first person to hold the role at the club Biography At UEFA Women’s EURO 2017, Jodie Taylor scored five goals in four appearances, took the Golden Boot, and became the first Englishwoman to score a hat-trick in a major international tournament. She was 31, and had already spent more than a decade moving between clubs across six countries. That breadth matters. Seventeen clubs in England, the United States, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and France is direct exposure to how elite performance cultures are built, maintained, and dismantled in genuinely different environments. Alongside the Golden Boot, Taylor won the FA Cup with Birmingham City and the UEFA Women’s Champions League with Lyon, earned 51 England caps, and was named Vauxhall England Player of the Year. She did all of it while navigating a serious knee injury and the structural uncertainties of a women’s game that was still building its professional infrastructure. What is less common is the transition she has made since retiring from professional football in 2023. Appointed Arsenal Women’s Technical Director in January 2026 – the first person to hold that role at the club – Taylor now works directly on the organisational conditions that enable elite performance: the structures, cultures, and systems that translate individual talent into consistent team output. She holds a UEFA A coaching licence and is completing a Masters in Sports Directorship. The result is a perspective that sits at the intersection of frontline competitive experience and structured organisational thinking. Taylor has seen high-performance culture from the inside of 17 different teams and is now building it from the outside. That combination is rare, and it is precisely what makes her valuable in leadership conversations about performance, resilience, and what teams actually need to deliver when the stakes are highest. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure High-performance team culture Resilience and sustained performance Leadership in competitive environments Building and maintaining team trust Mindset and focus in high-stakes situations Navigating setbacks and career adversity Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite audiences focused on performance culture and competitive resilience CHROs and People leaders building or transforming high-performance team environments Women’s leadership networks and inclusion programmes Sales, commercial, and performance-driven teams in competitive industries Audience outcomes A concrete, evidence-based account of what the conditions for sustained high performance actually look like – drawn from elite competition across multiple cultures and environments Clearer thinking about the gap between individual talent and collective team delivery, and what leaders can do to close it before pressure arrives Practical reflection on how trust, culture, and individual mindset interact in high-stakes moments A sharper vocabulary for leadership conversations about resilience, performance, and team culture Perspective from a practitioner who has both competed at the highest level and is now building organisational performance structures inside a major professional club

Why organisations work with Tanya Oxtoby She has built winning environments at both ends of the resource spectrum: Bristol City Women, operating on the WSL’s smallest budget, and Chelsea Women under Emma Hayes, the most dominant club side in English football. She has held a UEFA Pro Licence in a sport where fewer than a handful of women in the British and Irish game hold that qualification, and she has used it inside national-team rebuild conditions at Northern Ireland. She speaks directly about leading squad transitions; under her at Northern Ireland the average age of the squad dropped from 27 to 23, nine players debuted, and the world ranking improved while results remained mixed. That is the texture of real change leadership rather than the slide version. She brings a working perspective on inclusion as performance practice, drawing on her own indigenous Australian background and her record of developing female coaches and players inside the elite game. Biography highlights Manager, Newcastle United Women, appointed November 2025 on a contract to June 2029. Former manager, Northern Ireland senior women’s national team, 2023 to 2025. Former assistant coach, Chelsea FC Women, under Emma Hayes; two FA Women’s Super League titles and three Women’s FA Cups during her two seasons. Former manager, Bristol City Women, July 2018 to early 2022; record WSL points tally and a sixth place finish in her first season, with two Manager of the Month awards. UEFA Pro Licence holder. Former professional centre-back for Perth Glory, Western Waves and Doncaster Rovers Belles; captained Western Australia and Perth Glory. Biography Bristol City Women had the lowest budget in the Women’s Super League when Tanya Oxtoby took over in July 2018. By the end of her first season they had a record points tally, a sixth place finish in the WSL, and she had collected two Manager of the Month awards. That is the work that defines her as a leader: building standards inside teams that are not supposed to win at the level they end up competing at. The Chelsea years sharpened the credential. Two seasons as assistant to Emma Hayes, two FA Women’s Super League titles, three Women’s FA Cups. She joined the staff in 2021 and left in 2023 for the senior international job with Northern Ireland, a four-year project to reset a national team that had qualified for its first major tournament under the previous regime. Northern Ireland was the harder leadership test. She handed nine players their senior debuts, dropped the average squad age from 27 to 23, and improved the country’s world ranking, while results on the pitch stayed inconsistent. The squad reset was the point. In November 2025 she left to take the manager’s job at Newcastle United Women, on a contract running until 2029, in a recruitment process led by Director of Women’s Football Grace Williams. Oxtoby is one of a small group of women in the British and Irish game who holds a UEFA Pro Licence. She speaks publicly about her indigenous Australian heritage and the absence of visible role models from that background during her playing career at Perth Glory and Doncaster Rovers Belles. That gives her work on inclusion a specificity that most sports-speaker treatments of the subject lack. Key speaking topics Leadership under resource constraint Building winning cultures inside elite teams Squad and team renewal Performance leadership in high-pressure environments Inclusion and representation in elite sport Coaching at the top of professional football Ideal for CHROs and senior people leaders managing teams through restructure or budget pressure Operating leaders and divisional heads inside organisations rebuilding underperforming units Women’s leadership networks and senior development programmes Executive teams looking for an outside performance perspective on sustained pressure and public scrutiny Audience outcomes A sharper read on what raising standards actually looks like inside a team that is outspent or under-resourced A working framework for thinking about squad and team renewal without losing the people you keep A specific account of how a leader holds standards while results are inconsistent An honest perspective on inclusion as performance work rather than corporate signalling

Why organisations work with Perry McCarthy He brings a first-person account of operating inside a Formula One team that was actively working against its own driver, including being sent out at Spa with a broken steering component pulled from his teammate’s car. The lesson lands because the stakes were physical. His route into F1 ran through fourteen-hour shifts on North Sea oil rigs to fund the seat. Audiences hearing about resilience from him are hearing it from someone who priced it. The Stig role gives him a cultural hook into rooms that would not normally book a motorsport speaker, which makes him a strong choice for sales conferences, kick-offs, and after-dinner slots that need energy without losing substance. He is a working media commentator on Sky News and BBC News, not a retired driver reading off a script. The delivery is current and the timing is built for live audiences. Biography highlights Drove for Andrea Moda Formula in the 1992 Formula One World Championship. Tested for Williams and Benetton F1 teams. Competed at the 24 Hours of Le Mans on five occasions between 1996 and 2003. Original black-suited Stig on BBC’s Top Gear across the first two series. Author of “Flat Out, Flat Broke: Formula 1 the Hard Way!” (2002), with a foreword by Damon Hill. Regular motorsport contributor on Sky News and BBC News. Biography Reaching Formula One as a privateer is a financial problem before it is a sporting one. McCarthy worked fourteen-hour shifts on North Sea oil rigs to fund his junior career, then arrived at the 1992 world championship with Andrea Moda Formula, a team owned by an Italian shoe businessman that was, by any honest reading, set up to fail. He never made the grid. He also never crashed the car, which at one point was sent out at Spa with a broken steering component lifted from his teammate’s car. What he did get from that season was a working knowledge of how to keep operating when the people around you are not. He went on to test for Williams and Benetton, then built a career in sports cars that included five appearances at the 24 Hours of Le Mans between 1996 and 2003. In 2002, a chance meeting with Jeremy Clarkson at the launch of his autobiography “Flat Out, Flat Broke” led to the role that made him recognisable outside motorsport. He was the original Stig on BBC’s Top Gear, the black-suited version, across the first two series. His identity was exposed by a Sunday newspaper in early 2003. The speaking work is built on the same material. Damon Hill’s line about him still travels: “I have constant admiration on how he turns a no hope situation into some sort of triumph.” For a corporate audience, that is the asset. McCarthy can describe, with specifics, what it takes to keep performing when the equipment is wrong, the support is missing, and the result is no longer in your hands. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Resilience and recovery from setback Self-leadership in hostile conditions Team performance and trust Risk and decision-making Motorsport as a business analogy Ideal for Sales conferences and annual kick-offs needing high-energy keynote opening or close After-dinner audiences at corporate hospitality, awards, and partner events Leadership offsites focused on composure and persistence under pressure Automotive, motorsport-adjacent, and engineering brand events Audience outcomes A vivid, first-person account of operating inside a Formula One team that was actively against its own driver A practical reframe of resilience as a daily working habit rather than a slogan The cultural payoff of hearing the Top Gear Stig story directly from the original Stig Energy and humour that sets the tone for the rest of the agenda

Why organisations work with Mariana Atencio Field-tested authority on trust. Her reporting from family separations at the US border, cartel territory, and the Syrian border gives her arguments about authentic leadership a weight that pure motivational content cannot match. A bilingual broadcaster who has crossed from Univision to NBC News and back to independent media, which makes her credible to audiences and leadership teams operating across the Americas in both English and Spanish. Perfectly You, published by HarperCollins in English and Spanish, gives buyers a published, citable thesis on authenticity at work rather than a talk built from generic insights. A working journalist’s instinct on stage. She has moderated heads of state, Fortune 100 CEOs and panels at Microsoft, Nasdaq and the UN General Assembly, which is the same skill set buyers want when the brief is high-stakes interviewing rather than a standard keynote. Biography highlights Peabody Award winner for the Univision investigative documentary Rapido y Furioso on US-Mexico weapons trafficking. Three Emmy nominations, a Hillman Prize, and the NAHJ Presidential Award for reporting on cartel violence, migrant family separation and women’s rights. Former NBC News and MSNBC correspondent; prior bilingual correspondent at Univision. Author of Perfectly You: Embracing the Power of Being Real (HarperCollins, 2019), published in English and Spanish. 2021 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Founder of GoLike Media and creator of the 2022 true crime podcast Lost in Panama, which reached Apple Podcasts’ top 10. Biography The hardest assignments in network news are the ones where the people on camera have every reason not to trust the person holding the microphone. Atencio spent a decade in those rooms, reporting on family separations at the US border, cartel violence in Mexico, and women’s rights along the Syrian border for Univision and then NBC News. The Peabody Award came from that work, alongside a Hillman Prize, three Emmy nominations and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Presidential Award. That experience is the foundation for the second half of her career. Perfectly You: Embracing the Power of Being Real, published by HarperCollins in 2019 in English and Spanish, sets out a thesis on authenticity drawn directly from the field: that the leaders, families and communities who hold together under pressure are the ones who tell the truth about themselves and their circumstances. The book reads as reporting on trust, not self-help. She founded GoLike Media in 2020 and created Lost in Panama in 2022, a true crime podcast on the disappearance of two young Dutch hikers that became a top-10 Apple Podcasts release and was used as a platform to surface the wider issue of missing women in the region. She is a 2021 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. For corporate audiences, the combined record matters more than either half alone. A Peabody-winning correspondent who has interviewed heads of state and translated live on-air for NBC speaks about credibility, belonging and culture from a different place than a speaker who has only worked the keynote circuit. That is what buyers are paying for when they put her in front of a leadership team. Key speaking topics Authentic leadership and trust Belonging and culture in cross-border organisations Communication and storytelling for senior leaders Resilience and reinvention under pressure Latino market and the Americas Bilingual moderation, hosting and high-stakes interviewing Ideal for Leadership teams rebuilding internal trust after restructure, contested change or public scandal. CHROs and culture leads designing belonging and inclusion programmes with substance rather than signalling. CMOs, communications leaders and Latin America country heads briefing on bilingual audiences across the Americas. Conference hosts who need a moderator credible with heads of state, Fortune 100 CEOs and a sceptical room. Audience outcomes A sharper view of what authenticity actually costs senior leaders, and where the line sits between candour and overshare. A working framework for how trust is rebuilt with employees and external audiences who have stopped listening to corporate communications. Concrete examples of credibility under pressure, drawn from her on-the-ground reporting in conflict zones, migrant camps and political crises. A clearer read on the US Hispanic and broader Latin American audience for organisations operating across the region.

Why organisations work with Jose Ucar A structured methodology for cross-cultural influence, set out in Global Influence, shortlisted by The Institute of Leadership for its 2024 Leadership Book of the Year. Direct experience operating across four continents and two working languages, with delivery for Procter & Gamble, Amazon, SEAT-CUPRA, DAF Trucks, Hyundai, and Chiesi Pharmaceuticals. A practical lens on the gap between what senior leaders intend to communicate and what their international counterparts actually receive. Material that travels: the same frameworks land with a UK board, a Spanish-speaking sales team, and a multinational engineering function. Biography highlights Author of Global Influence: How business leaders can simplify, improve, and amplify their international impact, shortlisted for The Institute of Leadership’s Leadership Book of the Year 2024. TEDx speaker and host, including talks at TEDxSheffieldHallamUniversity and TEDxUniversityofSalford. Founder of Jose Ucar Ltd and the World-Class Communicator online programme. Delivered to Procter & Gamble, Amazon, SEAT-CUPRA, DAF Trucks, Hyundai, Chiesi Pharmaceuticals, Oral-B, UK Research and Innovation, the NHS, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Featured in LA Weekly, Yahoo Finance, Thrive Global, and Authority Magazine. Works fluently in English and Spanish; has lived, studied, and worked across Venezuela, Sweden, the UK, and beyond. Biography Most senior leaders are competent communicators in their home market and surprisingly ineffective the moment the room shifts language, culture, or hierarchy. Global Influence, Ucar’s book, is built around that gap. The Institute of Leadership shortlisted it for its 2024 Leadership Book of the Year, a recognition specifically tied to leadership practice rather than communications craft. His starting point is that international influence is a learnable discipline, not a personality trait. The frameworks set out in the book and on stage are designed to be portable across countries and functions, so a UK executive can use the same approach with a Spanish sales team, a German engineering function, and a US investor without re-engineering their style each time. That portability shows up in the client list. Procter & Gamble, Amazon, SEAT-CUPRA, DAF Trucks, Hyundai, Chiesi Pharmaceuticals, UK Research and Innovation, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have all booked him to work with leaders who carry international remits. The common brief is consistent: senior people whose technical authority is established and whose cross-border influence is not yet where it needs to be. His own background sits behind the work. Born in Venezuela, schooled in Sweden from sixteen, based in the UK, fluent in English and Spanish, with delivery experience across four continents. He uses that lived experience as evidence rather than ornament, which is what separates the material from generic communication training. Key speaking topics Cross-cultural communication and influence International leadership and global business Executive presence across cultures Communication and storytelling for senior leaders Personal brand and authentic leadership Resilience and mindset in international roles Ideal for CEOs, MDs, and country leaders with multi-market remits Senior commercial, sales, and partnership leaders working across borders HR, talent, and L&D leaders investing in international leadership capability Global teams in regulated, technical, or engineering-led industries where communication failure carries commercial cost Audience outcomes A clearer reading of how their current communication style lands in unfamiliar cultural contexts A working framework for adapting message, delivery, and presence without losing authenticity Specific language for the cross-cultural moments that most often derail senior conversations Renewed confidence to lead difficult conversations across markets, languages, and hierarchies

Why organisations work with Darren Woodson A rare second-act credibility: 12 NFL seasons, 14 years on ESPN, and an operating role at a global commercial real estate firm. Leaders hear from someone who has rebuilt his expertise twice over. A specific framework for culture, not generic motivation. The “Creating Cultures of Excellence” model names four conditions a team must meet to perform at the top: hard change, honest confrontation, healthy competition and heartfelt character. First-hand authority on what high-performance environments actually feel like, drawn from a locker room that won three Super Bowls in four seasons and from twelve years inside one of the most scrutinised franchises in American sport. A practitioner’s view of reinvention. As co-founder and chairman of CounterFind, Woodson has built a venture-backed technology company from scratch, which gives him real material on entrepreneurship, founder transition and operating discipline beyond the locker room. Biography highlights Three-time Super Bowl champion (XXVII, XXVIII, XXX) with the Dallas Cowboys. Five-time Pro Bowl selection and the Cowboys’ all-time leading tackler with 1,350 career tackles. Inducted into the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor (2015), the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. NFL analyst at ESPN for 14 years following retirement from playing. Managing Principal at Cresa, the world’s largest occupier-only commercial real estate advisory firm. Co-founder and chairman of CounterFind, a Dallas-based technology company that uses image recognition to remove counterfeit merchandise listings from Amazon, Facebook and Instagram. Biography A team that has won three championships in four seasons is not held together by talent alone. It is held together by the willingness to have difficult conversations every day. That is the environment Darren Woodson grew up inside as a strong safety for the Dallas Cowboys, and it is the lens he brings to the leadership teams he now advises. Over twelve NFL seasons, Woodson became the Cowboys’ all-time leading tackler with 1,350 career tackles, earned five Pro Bowl selections and won Super Bowls XXVII, XXVIII and XXX. He was inducted into the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor in 2015 alongside the franchise’s most enduring figures. The second act has been deliberate. Fourteen years as an ESPN analyst gave Woodson a public communicator’s discipline. He then moved into commercial real estate, where he is now Managing Principal at Cresa, the only global advisory firm representing occupiers rather than landlords. In parallel, he co-founded CounterFind, a venture-backed technology company that has removed counterfeit listings worth millions from Amazon, Facebook and Instagram. His keynote work is organised around a framework he calls Creating Cultures of Excellence, built on four conditions: hard change, honest confrontation, healthy competition and heartfelt character. The argument is that average cultures avoid all four. Winning ones, in sport and in business, build the muscle to live inside them. Woodson has tested the proposition at the top of professional sport and in the rebuilding of a commercial career, and he speaks to it as a practitioner. Key speaking topics Building cultures of excellence Leadership and team performance under pressure Change management and organisational transformation Resilience and reinvention Allyship and crucial conversations Entrepreneurship and second-career leadership Ideal for C-suite leadership teams are setting cultural standards for their next operating cycle Sales kickoffs and commercial leadership offsites CHROs and people leaders running culture transformation programmes Board and partner meetings at professional services firms Audience outcomes A clear four-part test for whether their team is genuinely competing or quietly settling Practical language for having the honest conversations leaders most often avoid A perspective on reinvention drawn from someone who has rebuilt his career twice Conviction that culture is built through specific behaviours, not slogans

Why organisations work with Trent Shelton He reaches audiences that corporate wellbeing programmes typically cannot. With a global digital following built over a decade, he speaks to employees in a register HR initiatives rarely achieve. His three books, including “Protect Your Peace” (Hay House, 2023) and “The Greatest You” (HarperCollins Leadership, 2019), give him a coherent published body of work on mindset, boundaries, and personal resilience. He brings a former professional athlete’s framing of preparation and pressure, applied to ordinary working life rather than elite performance abstractions. He has built and run RehabTime, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, since 2011, giving him operational experience of the message he speaks on, not only the message itself. Biography highlights Former NFL wide receiver: Indianapolis Colts, Washington Redskins, Seattle Seahawks Baylor University, BA Speech Communications, 2007 Founder and president, RehabTime Organization (501(c)(3) nonprofit, established 2011) Author of “Protect Your Peace” (Hay House, 2023), “The Greatest You” (HarperCollins Leadership, 2019), and “Straight Up” Host of “The Trent Shelton Podcast” (launched 2019) Built one of the largest personal-development digital audiences in the United States Biography Most wellbeing programmes inside large organisations are not working. Employees skip the workshops, the engagement scores stay flat, and the language of resilience starts to feel like another corporate initiative. The audiences that need the message most are often the ones least willing to receive it from HR. Trent Shelton built a following of millions by speaking past that wall. After a short NFL career with the Colts, Redskins, and Seahawks ended sooner than he wanted, he founded RehabTime in 2011 as a Christian-based nonprofit focused on personal development and recovery from setback. The organisation obtained 501(c)(3) status in 2013, and the work has continued for more than a decade. The published body of work followed. “The Greatest You” (HarperCollins Leadership, 2019) and “Protect Your Peace” (Hay House, 2023) lay out his arguments on self-worth, boundaries, and intentional living. His podcast, launched in 2019, has produced nearly 200 episodes and reaches a wide global audience. For organisations, his value is reach and register. He speaks the language of employees who have stopped trusting institutional wellbeing language, and he does so with a personal story of setback and rebuild that lands without needing translation. Key speaking topics Employee wellbeing and burnout Mental health in the workplace Resilience and recovery from setback Self-leadership and personal accountability Mindset and peak performance Motivation and inspiration Ideal for Employee-wide all-hands and culture events where the audience extends well beyond senior leadership CHROs and wellbeing leads commissioning content on burnout, mental health, and engagement Sales, retail, and frontline workforces where personal motivation and resilience drive performance Faith-based and community-oriented organisations seeking values-aligned content Audience outcomes A direct, plain-language case for protecting attention, energy, and personal boundaries at work Specific principles from “Protect Your Peace” applied to the realities of modern working life A re-anchoring of personal accountability and self-worth as the foundation of sustained performance A narrative of setback and rebuild from professional sport that lands across seniority levels

Why organisations work with Alvin Law A resilience keynote built on six decades of lived practice, not a framework borrowed from research. Born without arms, he has worked, broadcast, performed music, and raised a family by inventing methods most people assume cannot exist. Hall of Fame platform craft. Inducted into the Canadian Speakers Hall of Fame (CAPS) in 2009 and one of the under-ten-percent of professional speakers globally to hold the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation. A trained broadcaster’s command of room, pacing, and message. The keynote is built for large internal audiences, sales kick-offs, and association main stages where a speaker has to reset attention, not just hold it. Subject of three internationally distributed documentaries by John Zaritsky and an Emmy-winning ABC FrontRunners segment, which gives the booking a level of cultural recognition that travels beyond the room. Inducted into the Canadian Disability Hall of Fame in 2018 and recipient of the Peter Legge Philanthropic Award in 2022, signalling a track record of substantive contribution rather than platform alone. Biography highlights Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and inductee, Canadian Speakers Hall of Fame (CAPS), 2009. Inductee, Canadian Disability Hall of Fame, 2018. Author, Alvin’s Laws of Life: 5 Steps To Successfully Overcome Anything. Subject of three John Zaritsky documentaries: Broken Promises (1989), Extraordinary People (1993), and No Limits: The Thalidomide Saga (2016). Vanier Award for Outstanding Young Canadians (1982); Queen Elizabeth Golden Jubilee Medal (2002); Peter Legge Philanthropic Award (2022). Trained broadcaster, Mount Royal College (graduated with honours, 1980), with a professional radio career at CFMQ FM Regina before founding AJL Communications Ltd. in 1988. Biography Resilience is the variable that quietly decides how organisations come through repeated change. When it thins, every other leadership tool gets harder to use. The keynote that restores it cannot be theoretical; it has to be earned in front of the audience. That is the room Alvin Law has been built for. Born in Yorkton, Saskatchewan in 1960 without arms, the result of his birth mother’s exposure to thalidomide, Law was placed for adoption at five days old and raised by Hilda and Jack Law. He learned to use his feet for tasks most people associate with hands, including playing trombone and drumming, and trained as a broadcaster at Mount Royal College, graduating with honours in 1980. A radio career at CFMQ FM in Regina followed, then full-time speaking from 1988 through AJL Communications Ltd. The credentials are unusually concrete for the resilience category. Law holds the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, sits in the Canadian Speakers Hall of Fame (CAPS, 2009) and the Canadian Disability Hall of Fame (2018), and was named a Vanier Outstanding Young Canadian in 1982. He is the author of Alvin’s Laws of Life: 5 Steps To Successfully Overcome Anything and the subject of three John Zaritsky documentaries, including the Emmy-recognised FrontRunners segment on ABC. What buyers actually book is platform craft applied to a workforce problem. Law uses broadcasting discipline, drumming, and direct storytelling to move a room from spectator to participant inside an hour, which is why association main stages, sales kick-offs, and large internal town halls return to him. Key speaking topics Resilience and adversity Mindset and personal agency Motivation and inspiration Storytelling and stagecraft Workforce engagement after change Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace Disability advocacy and inclusion Ideal for Sales kick-offs, association annual conferences, and large internal town halls reopening after restructuring or repeated change. CHROs and culture leads commissioning a credible, non-clinical voice on resilience for a whole-workforce moment. Healthcare, education, and not-for-profit audiences where lived experience carries more weight than corporate framing. Internal communications and event leads briefing a main-stage opener or closer that needs to reset attention across a wide demographic. Audience outcomes A reset on what the room treats as a real obstacle versus a story about one. Specific, repeatable mental habits for keeping composure when conditions stay difficult. A renewed sense of personal agency, including in roles where people feel acted upon by change. A shared experience that managers can refer back to in team conversations months later.

Why organisations work with Alison Canavan She turns wellbeing from a benefits line item into something employees do during the working day. Her signature 5-Minute Journal practice and short mindfulness routines are designed for people who say they have no time for wellbeing. She brings a UCLA Semel Institute mindfulness credential into rooms that would otherwise be sceptical of meditation language, which gives HR and people leaders a defensible programme to stand behind. She built a structured wellbeing series for an airline, Aer Lingus, on a workforce known for shift fatigue and circadian disruption. That kind of operational application travels well into other shift-heavy and high-pressure environments. She speaks from a lived recovery narrative, postnatal depression, addiction, single parenthood, without turning the talk into therapy. Audiences disclose more honestly afterwards, which is what HR teams say they need. She is comfortable with both a 200-person town hall and an executive offsite, which matters for organisations rolling a single wellbeing voice across multiple formats. Biography highlights UCLA-trained Mindfulness Facilitator, Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior Author of Minding Mum: It’s Time to Take Care of You, published by Gill Books, Ireland Master NLP Practitioner, HeartMath facilitator, and graduate of the Irish Institute of Nutrition and Health (Advanced Diploma in Diet and Nutrition Therapeutics) Creator of the Wellbeing in the Skies series for Aer Lingus Corporate keynote and workshop work cited with Google, YouTube, Deloitte, Coinbase, Allianz, Bank of Ireland, PayPal, Bristol Myers Squibb, Deutsche Telekom and Vitality Regular contributor to Irish broadsheet and broadcast media on mental health and wellbeing, including The Sunday Independent and Ireland AM Biography Most wellbeing programmes inside organisations underperform for the same reason. They treat stress and mental health as a benefits category rather than something that happens minute by minute during the working day. Alison Canavan’s corporate work is built around closing that gap. She trained as a Mindfulness Facilitator at UCLA’s Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and combines that with practitioner-level work in NLP, HeartMath and nutrition. The point of stacking those disciplines is practical. Different parts of a workforce respond to different entry points, and her programmes are designed to give people a route in that does not require them to call it meditation if they do not want to. Her book Minding Mum, published by Gill Books in Ireland, established her early authority on postnatal mental health and self-care. The corporate work has since broadened into stress, burnout, anxiety, hybrid working pressure, and the slow erosion of attention that senior teams now describe as their biggest people problem. Her Wellbeing in the Skies series, built for Aer Lingus cabin crew, is one example of a structured programme designed for a workforce that cannot easily step away from the job to look after itself. What audiences tend to take from her sessions is not a concept but a habit. The 5-Minute Journal practice she teaches is the most cited example. It is short enough to survive a real working week, which is the only test that matters for workplace wellbeing content. Key speaking topics Workplace mental health and burnout Mindfulness and daily practice for high-pressure teams Stress, anxiety and recovery Hybrid working and return-to-office wellbeing Self-leadership and emotional regulation Resilience and sustainable performance Postnatal mental health and parental wellbeing Ideal for CHROs and heads of people designing the next iteration of their wellbeing strategy Wellbeing, DEI and employee experience leads commissioning company-wide programmes Operational leaders of shift-based or high-pressure workforces (airlines, healthcare, financial services, contact centres) Leadership offsites and senior team meetings where stress and personal capacity have become a strategic conversation Audience outcomes A daily practice, anchored in the 5-Minute Journal method, that survives a real working week A clearer language for stress, burnout and anxiety that employees and managers can actually use with each other Specific techniques for nervous system regulation that work in the gaps between meetings A more honest conversation about mental health inside the room, which most HR teams report as the single hardest thing to engineer

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 Lizzie Carr She has built and runs an operating environmental non-profit, not a campaign. Planet Patrol’s app turns volunteer activity into structured pollution and water-quality data, which is a usable model for any organisation thinking about citizen-led evidence gathering. Her record-setting expeditions (England’s waterways solo, the English Channel, the Hudson) gave the work its primary dataset. The endurance story is inseparable from the environmental method, which makes for a sustainability talk that actually contains a method. A cancer diagnosis at 26 sits behind the whole trajectory. That gives audiences a credible voice on personal resilience and reinvention without it being a separate, bolted-on talk. Recognition from the Crown (MBE, 2021) and from the Prime Minister’s Points of Light award gives the profile institutional weight that bureau-built activist profiles often lack. Authored Paddling Britain (2018) and hosts the Earth Shakers podcast, with regular media presence on BBC, Sky News, Channel 4 and national newspapers. The platform is real. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Planet Patrol; nearly 500,000 pieces of litter recorded by volunteers across 113 countries. MBE, 2021, for services to environmental work and activism. First person to paddleboard England’s connected waterways solo and unsupported (400 miles, 22 days). First woman to solo paddleboard the English Channel; also crossed the Hudson River (170 miles, 8 days). Author, Paddling Britain (Bradt, 2018); host, Earth Shakers podcast. Named in Top 10 Female Climate Activists lists by Stylist, Marie Claire and Glamour; Stylist Inspiration of the Year, 2020. Biography Most environmental campaigners describe a problem. Carr built a tool that measures it. Planet Patrol began as one woman with a paddleboard and a phone, plotting every piece of plastic she could see along England’s 400 miles of inland waterway, and has become a citizen-science platform with volunteers in more than 100 countries logging pollution and water-quality data into a single app. The origin matters because the method does. Carr was diagnosed with cancer at 26 and took up paddleboarding during recovery. Three world firsts followed, each a research expedition as much as an endurance feat. The English waterway crossing produced over 20,000 plastic data points. The English Channel and Hudson River crossings extended the platform internationally. The expeditions gave the non-profit its data, its public profile and its operating logic. That logic is what makes the talk land in a corporate room. The argument is that environmental action becomes credible when it produces evidence, that citizen science is a legitimate route to that evidence at scale, and that personal conviction holds up when it has a measurement framework underneath it. Carr’s MBE in 2021, the Prime Minister’s Points of Light award, and her place in the Stylist, Marie Claire and Glamour lists of leading climate activists are recognitions of an operating contribution, not just a story. She is the author of Paddling Britain (Bradt, 2018), hosts the Earth Shakers podcast, and writes and broadcasts regularly across UK national press and television. Audiences leave with a story they remember and, more usefully for a sustainability or purpose programme, a working example of how community action becomes data and how data becomes accountability. Key speaking topics Citizen science and environmental data Plastic pollution and freshwater health Sustainability leadership and purpose Building and scaling a non-profit Personal resilience and reinvention after illness Adventure, endurance and mental performance Activism without perfectionism Ideal for Sustainability and ESG leads designing employee or community engagement programmes with measurable outcomes. CSR, foundation and purpose teams looking for a credible activist voice with operating substance. Leadership and culture programmes wanting a resilience and reinvention narrative with verifiable proof points. Conferences and offsites where a sustainability or wellbeing keynote needs a memorable lead voice. Audience outcomes A clear example of how citizen-led data collection translates environmental concern into evidence organisations can use. A working model for turning a single expedition or campaign into a long-term operating platform. A vivid case for personal reinvention after a serious health setback, told without sentiment. Language and arguments senior leaders can take back into their own sustainability and purpose conversations.

Why organisations work with Lisa Feldman Barrett She has reshaped the scientific consensus on emotion. Her theory of constructed emotion is now taught in psychology, neuroscience and affective computing curricula, and it directly contradicts the assumptions baked into most corporate EQ training and emotion-detection AI. She translates first-tier neuroscience for boardrooms without diluting it. Her two trade books, How Emotions Are Made and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, are written for general readers but cite the same primary research she publishes in Science and Nature Neuroscience. Her work has been adopted by audiences that need it to be right, including FBI behavioural analysts, the legal community through her role as Chief Science Officer at the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior, and senior medical faculties at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital. A leader who books her gets a researcher with NIH Pioneer Award and Guggenheim credentials, not a popular-science communicator working from secondary sources. Biography highlights University Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Northeastern University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Chief Science Officer, Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital. Author of How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. TED speaker, with the talk “You Aren’t at the Mercy of Your Emotions” passing 6.5 million views. NIH Director’s Pioneer Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award; APS William James Fellow Award. Past President of the Association for Psychological Science; co-founder of the Society for Affective Science; over 275 peer-reviewed publications. Biography The textbook view of emotion, that anger, fear and joy are hard-wired circuits with universal facial signatures, dominated psychology, psychiatry and product design for most of the last century. It is also wrong. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s laboratory at Northeastern has spent twenty-five years showing that the brain constructs emotion in the moment, drawing on past experience, bodily state and cultural learning. Her theory of constructed emotion has reshaped affective science and is now reaching the institutions that depend on getting emotion right. She advises the FBI on behavioural analysis, serves as Chief Science Officer at the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior, and her work is cited in debates over emotion-detection AI and courtroom evidence. Barrett holds a University Distinguished Professorship at Northeastern, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. She has published more than 275 peer-reviewed papers, sits among the top 0.1 percent most-cited scientists in the world, and has received the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. For senior leaders, the practical payoff is a sharper model of how their own brains, and their people’s, actually work under uncertainty. That model contradicts a great deal of what corporate wellbeing, EQ training and emotion-aware technology currently sell. Key speaking topics The science of emotion in the workplace Brain, prediction and decision-making under uncertainty Stress, allostasis and the body budget The neuroscience of self-regulation for senior leaders Emotion-detection AI and the limits of affective computing Mental health and the construction of experience Communication and influence grounded in brain science Ideal for CEOs, CHROs and senior leadership teams reassessing wellbeing, EQ training and performance management Boards and risk committees evaluating emotion-recognition AI, behavioural surveillance, or affective computing investments Healthcare, legal and security organisations whose decisions hinge on interpreting human behaviour Senior leaders wanting a substantive, science-led perspective on stress, resilience and decision quality Audience outcomes A working understanding of how the brain predicts and constructs emotion, replacing the “universal emotions” model that underpins most corporate EQ content. A clearer view of what emotion-detection technology can and cannot reliably do, useful for evaluating vendors and policy. Practical implications for stress, recovery and senior decision-making, grounded in the brain’s energy regulation rather than pop-psychology. Sharper questions about how performance reviews, hiring assessments and customer research read emotional signals.