Resilience & Stress Management

Why organisations work with Andrew McNeill He has run leadership under genuine national pressure, including UK Government assurance of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic torches and a Director role on the Building Safety Programme established after the Grenfell Tower fire. His method is published and codified. Organisational Mindfulness: A How-to Guide is one of the few practitioner books that treats mindfulness as an organisational intervention rather than an individual wellbeing benefit. He sits inside the institutional architecture of the field as Co-Director of BAMBA, the UK’s mindfulness accreditation body, and as Projects Advisor to the Mindfulness Initiative, the charity that grew out of the parliamentary All-Party group. He speaks to leadership groups, not wellbeing audiences. The work focuses on team functioning, psychological safety, and decision quality under pressure, with operational examples from running multi-billion pound programmes. Biography highlights Twenty years in senior leadership, most recently as a Director in the UK Civil Service responsible for major national programmes. Led UK Government assurance for the Olympic and Paralympic torches, London 2012. Served as Director on the Building Safety Programme set up after the Grenfell Tower fire. Co-founder of LxLeaders, a leadership consultancy working with senior teams. Author of Organisational Mindfulness: A How-to Guide (2019). Co-Director of BAMBA, the British Association of Mindfulness-Based Approaches, and Projects Advisor at the Mindfulness Initiative. Biography The Olympic and Paralympic torch relays for London 2012 were a continuous national event under media and security scrutiny. Andrew McNeill ran the UK Government’s assurance of them. A few years later, after the Grenfell Tower fire, he served as a Director on the Building Safety Programme established to respond to it. Both roles required senior leadership inside conditions where the cost of a wrong decision was public and immediate. That operational record is the spine of what he now does with private and public sector leadership teams. He is the co-founder of LxLeaders, a consultancy that works with senior groups on team functioning, psychological safety, and self-leadership under pressure. Alongside the consultancy, he has built a position inside the field itself. He is Co-Director of BAMBA, the UK’s mindfulness accreditation body, and lead Projects Advisor at the Mindfulness Initiative, the charity that emerged from the UK Parliament’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness. His 2019 book Organisational Mindfulness: A How-to Guide is one of the few practitioner texts that treats mindfulness as a method of organisational design rather than an individual intervention. Speaking clients to date include Dell Technologies, Experian, RSM US, Allianz Technology, LexisNexis, and the NHS. The brief is consistent: senior teams operating under repeated pressure who need a credible, plain-spoken voice on how composure and team functioning actually work in practice. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under pressure Psychological safety in senior teams Empathetic leadership Burnout recognition and recovery Team collaboration under sustained change Organisational mindfulness as practice Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive committees facing continuous change loads CHROs and people directors commissioning beyond standard wellbeing programming Public sector and regulated industry leaders working in high-scrutiny environments Programme and transformation leads running multi-year delivery under public pressure Audience outcomes A working language for psychological safety inside a senior team, separated from HR theatre A read on burnout signals at team level before they show up in attrition data Specific practices senior leaders can use to hold composure across long decision cycles A clearer view of how mindfulness functions as an operational discipline, not a benefit

Why organisations work with Dalia Feldheim She led the brand team behind Always #LikeAGirl, a campaign that won 14 Cannes Lions and was named by Forbes as one of the most influential of the decade. She now translates that instinct for cultural change into how leaders run teams. Her book “Dare to Lead Like a Girl”, with a foreword by Sheryl Sandberg, sets out a specific playbook built on purpose, perseverance, people-first and positivity, rooted in both corporate practice and organisational psychology. She teaches the Science of Happiness and Resilience as an Adjunct Professor at Singapore Management University, bringing applied positive psychology into the room, not just a founder story. Her credentials are practitioner-plus-clinician: an INSEAD Executive Masters in Consulting and Coaching for Change, ICF coach accreditation, and training as a psychodynamic group therapist. That range lets her work with executive teams on culture change without oversimplifying. She speaks from inside the marketing craft, which makes her credible with commercial leaders who are suspicious of wellbeing content that does not understand how businesses actually grow. Biography highlights 17 years at Procter and Gamble as a C-suite global marketing executive, leading Always, Tampax and Whisper brand teams. Led the Always #LikeAGirl campaign, 14 Cannes Lions, named by Forbes as one of the most influential campaigns of the decade. Author of “Dare to Lead Like a Girl” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022), foreword by Sheryl Sandberg. Revised paperback “Lead Like a Girl” followed in 2024. Adjunct Professor at Singapore Management University, teaching the Science of Happiness and Resilience. Executive Masters in Consulting and Coaching for Change, INSEAD. Certified teacher in the Science of Happiness via the Happiness Studies Academy with Tal Ben-Shahar. Founder of Flow Leadership Consultancy and of Uppiness, a positive-psychology game for employees. Featured in McKinsey Author Talks and on TED.com via TEDxJaffaWomen. Biography Always #LikeAGirl rewired how a generation talks about what girls can do. Dalia Feldheim led the brand team behind it at Procter and Gamble. The campaign won 14 Cannes Lions and was later listed by Forbes among the most influential campaigns of the decade. That work sits at the centre of how she thinks about leadership today. After 17 years running global marketing for P and G brands including Always, Tampax and Whisper, she retrained as an organisational psychologist at INSEAD and as a certified teacher in the Science of Happiness at the Happiness Studies Academy with Tal Ben-Shahar. Flow Leadership Consultancy grew out of that combination. Her book “Dare to Lead Like a Girl” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022, foreword by Sheryl Sandberg) argues that the most durable response to burnout is a leadership style built on purpose, perseverance, people-first and positivity, for men and women alike. McKinsey featured her in its Author Talks series on the same thesis. She teaches the Science of Happiness and Resilience as an Adjunct Professor at Singapore Management University, and works with executive teams on building cultures that combine psychological safety with commercial ambition. Her TEDxJaffaWomen talk, also titled “Dare to Lead Like a Girl”, is published on TED.com. Key speaking topics Purpose-driven leadership and the four Ps: purpose, perseverance, people-first, positivity Psychological safety and culture change Resilience and the science of happiness at work Women in leadership and gender equality in the workplace Burnout, wellbeing and sustainable performance Purpose-led brand building Ideal for CHROs and heads of leadership development rethinking how they build leaders through sustained pressure. CMOs and brand leaders looking at purpose-led marketing from someone who has led it at scale. Executive teams running culture, DEI or wellbeing programmes that need credibility with commercial leaders. Leadership offsites where the audience wants substance from a practitioner, not motivational content. Audience outcomes A language for leading with empathy and purpose that commercial leaders can actually use with their teams. A clearer view of how psychological safety links to commercial performance, not just engagement scores. Specific positive-psychology practices leaders can apply to manage burnout in themselves and their teams. A sharper read on how purpose shows up in brand and culture, drawn from the Always #LikeAGirl playbook. A framework for rethinking gender and leadership style without reducing the conversation to representation numbers.

Why organisations work with Jacqueline Carter Four named books from Harvard Business Review Press and Palgrave (One Second Ahead, The Mind of the Leader, Compassionate Leadership, More Human) that give a board or executive team a shared language for the human side of leadership. A research base built from interviews with more than a hundred CEOs and 360-degree surveys of leaders worldwide, conducted through Potential Project. Her arguments come with evidence, not anecdote. A framework, “wise compassion”, that gives leaders a usable answer to the empathy-versus-results tension most senior teams are stuck on. Twenty years of consulting at Deloitte and Potential Project with named clients including Cisco, Disney, Accenture, IKEA, and Royal Bank of Canada, so she speaks to executives in the language of operational reality, not theory. One of the few credible voices on AI-augmented leadership writing from a leadership-science lens rather than a technology one, anchored in her 2025 book More Human. Biography highlights Senior Partner and North America Director, Potential Project. Co-author, More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025). Co-author, Compassionate Leadership (HBR Press, 2022) and The Mind of the Leader (HBR Press, 2018). Co-author, One Second Ahead (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). MSc in Organizational Behaviour; former leader in Deloitte Consulting’s Change Leadership practice. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and Business Insider. Biography The most senior leaders in large organisations are being asked to do contradictory things at once: cut hard, care visibly, deploy AI fast, and keep the workforce engaged through the disruption it causes. Most leadership advice picks one side of that tension and ignores the other. Jacqueline Carter’s work, built over two decades at Potential Project and Deloitte before that, is about holding both. Her four books with Harvard Business Review Press and Palgrave map the same argument across different terrain. The Mind of the Leader (2018) sets out the foundation: mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion as practical leadership disciplines. Compassionate Leadership (2022) names the operating problem most senior leaders run into when they try to lead with empathy, namely that empathy alone makes them indecisive, and proposes “wise compassion” as the working alternative. More Human (2025) turns the same lens on AI, arguing that the technology amplifies whichever leadership instinct is already there. The research base is unusual for a leadership speaker. Potential Project’s work draws on interviews with more than a hundred CEOs and 360-degree surveys of leaders and employees across industries. That gives Carter the evidence to make specific claims about what produces trust, candour, and performance in senior teams, rather than the generic motivational frame most leadership keynotes default to. She writes regularly for Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and Business Insider, and has worked with executive teams at Cisco, Disney, Accenture, IKEA, Kimberly-Clark, and Royal Bank of Canada. The thread running through all of it is a single argument senior buyers will recognise immediately: the human qualities most leaders treat as soft are the ones that actually scale under pressure. Key speaking topics Compassionate leadership and the empathy-versus-results tension AI-augmented leadership Leading through change, restructure, and uncertainty Self-leadership and resilience for senior executives Hybrid and virtual team leadership Difficult conversations and leadership candour Mindfulness and attention as leadership disciplines Ideal for CEOs and executive committees rebuilding leadership culture after restructure or rapid growth. CHROs and CLOs designing senior leadership development programmes. Boards and senior teams working out how to deploy AI without losing the workforce. Partner groups and senior leaders in professional services managing client and team pressure simultaneously. Audience outcomes A working definition of “wise compassion” that senior leaders can use the next day in difficult conversations. A clearer view of where their own leadership defaults toward avoidance, false toughness, or performative care. A practical frame for using AI to extend leadership capacity rather than substitute for it. Specific language for the trade-offs between speed, candour, and care that most executive teams struggle to name. A research-backed counter to the assumption that human-centred leadership is incompatible with hard performance.

Why organisations work with Rasmus Hougaard He runs one of the largest applied research programmes on senior leadership behaviour, with data on more than 75,000 leaders in over 100 countries through Potential Project, which gives his content a defensibility most leadership speakers cannot match. Three Harvard Business Review Press books form a single argument, mindfulness, compassion, and AI-augmented leadership, which means a client can build a multi-year leadership curriculum around one coherent thesis rather than a single talk. His “compassionate leadership” framework gives executives a usable language for difficult conversations, restructures, and performance decisions, which is exactly the territory where senior people most often damage their credibility. Potential Project has long-running operating relationships with Microsoft, Accenture, IKEA, Cisco, Nike, Roche, and others, so the content has been pressure-tested inside large complex organisations, not just on the conference circuit. Thinkers50 shortlisting for the Leadership Award places him in the small set of leadership thinkers whose work is taken seriously by senior HR and people-development functions globally. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director of Potential Project, a global leadership development and research firm working with Microsoft, Accenture, IKEA, Cisco, Nike, Roche, Google, and Sony among others. Co-author of three Harvard Business Review Press books: “The Mind of the Leader”, “Compassionate Leadership”, and “More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead”. Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Leadership Award and named by Thinkers50 among the most important emerging leadership thinkers. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and Business Insider. Research base of more than 75,000 leaders across 100+ countries underpins his frameworks and talks. Has delivered more than 1,500 keynotes and workshops to senior leadership audiences globally. Biography Most leadership development goes wrong at the same point. It treats the hard part of leadership, the decision that will upset someone, the conversation the leader has been avoiding, the moment of public pressure, as a communications problem. Potential Project, the firm Rasmus Hougaard founded and runs as Managing Director, has spent more than a decade arguing that it is an inner-discipline problem, and producing the research to show it. The argument runs through three Harvard Business Review Press books written with Jacqueline Carter. “The Mind of the Leader” drew on data from around 35,000 senior leaders to identify the mental qualities that distinguish those whose organisations actually follow them. “Compassionate Leadership” reframed the executive’s most uncomfortable moments, performance conversations, redundancies, restructure announcements, as a question of how to be honest without becoming cold. “More Human”, published by HBR Press in 2025, takes the same lens to AI and asks what leaders should do more of, not less, as machines take on more of the work. Potential Project’s client list, Microsoft, Accenture, IKEA, Cisco, Nike, Roche, Google, Sony, and others, gives the work an operating substance that pure-academic leadership thinkers rarely match. The firm’s research spans more than 75,000 leaders across 100 countries. Thinkers50 has shortlisted him for its Leadership Award and listed him among the most important emerging leadership thinkers globally, and he contributes regularly to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and Business Insider. For a senior people function under pressure to make leadership development do real work in a fatigued organisation, the value is in the through-line. One firm, one body of evidence, one argument about what serious leadership requires in 2026, and a deep enough catalogue to anchor a multi-year programme rather than a single keynote. Key speaking topics Compassionate leadership and difficult conversations AI-augmented leadership Mindful leadership and executive composure Senior leadership development at scale Leading hybrid and distributed teams Culture and trust inside large organisations Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning senior leadership programmes Executive committees facing restructure, redundancy, or post-acquisition integration Boards and CEOs sponsoring AI rollouts where leadership behaviour, not technology, is the bottleneck Heads of leadership development and learning at global enterprises Audience outcomes A defensible model for handling the conversations leaders most often avoid Concrete practices for sustaining composure and judgement under sustained pressure A clearer view of where AI should and should not replace human leadership work Language to describe what “good leadership” actually looks like in their organisation, grounded in research rather than slogans Reference points from a peer set of global enterprises that have implemented the work

Why organisations work with Marissa Afton She brings a published, board-ready framework for compassion paired with difficult action, set out in Compassionate Leadership (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), not a generic wellbeing message. She works at the inside edge of what leaders actually face right now: how to communicate restructure, layoff and AI-driven role change in a way that retains the people who stay. Her client base spans Apple, Bloomberg, Cisco, Google, Eli Lilly and Amgen, so her examples are drawn from leadership teams operating at the same scale and pressure as the buyer’s. She is one of the few voices on this topic with 25 years of mindfulness practice behind the management argument, which gives the material a depth of practice that pure consulting frameworks lack. Her recent HBR work on AI and compassionate leadership puts her ahead of most leadership speakers on the question of what changes when machines do more of the cognitive work. Biography highlights Partner and Head of Global Accounts, Potential Project. Co-author, Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022). Contributing author, The Mind of the Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2018). Recurring contributor to Harvard Business Review, including “Connect with Empathy, But Lead with Compassion” and “Using AI to Make You a More Compassionate Leader.” Client engagements at Apple, Bloomberg, Cisco, Eli Lilly, Google and Amgen. Twenty-five years of formal mindfulness practice, applied to executive development at scale. Biography Hard decisions are arriving faster, and the audience for them has changed. Boards are being asked to restructure, redeploy and let people go in the same year they ask for innovation, retention and engagement. The leaders inside that contradiction need a way to act decisively without becoming the problem they were hired to solve. That is the territory Marissa Afton works in. As Partner and Head of Global Accounts at Potential Project, she runs leadership engagements with companies including Apple, Bloomberg, Cisco, Google, Eli Lilly and Amgen, and the brief is consistently the same: how do senior people deliver difficult news, drive hard change and still hold the room. Her co-authored book Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022) is the published frame for that work. The argument, also developed in her HBR pieces with Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter, is that empathy on its own makes leaders worse at hard decisions, and that the discipline organisations need is wise compassion, the willingness to act on hard truth while keeping the human in view. She brings a quarter century of mindfulness practice to the management argument, which gives her work a depth of attention that consulting frameworks typically lack. Her more recent HBR writing on AI and compassionate leadership pushes the same discipline into the next phase of corporate change, where the question is what kind of human presence still matters when more of the cognitive work runs through machines. Key speaking topics Compassionate leadership and hard decisions Leading through restructure, layoffs and change The mind of the leader and mental agility Mindful leadership and self-leadership at senior levels Resilience and burnout prevention for executives Women in senior leadership Leading in the age of AI Building human connection in hybrid work Ideal for CEOs, CHROs and senior HR leaders running restructure, redeployment or layoff programmes Executive leadership teams working on culture and trust through periods of significant change Boards and ELT offsites where the brief is to combine commercial honesty with humane delivery Women’s leadership programmes and senior leadership development cohorts Audience outcomes A working language for combining hard decisions with humane delivery, drawn from a published HBR Press framework A clearer view of where empathy helps leaders and where it begins to undermine them Specific practices for self-leadership under pressure, grounded in mental training rather than motivation A perspective on AI-era leadership that treats human attention as a scarce, trainable resource

Why organisations work with YuJin Wong He treats mental fitness as a performance discipline with measurable inputs, not a wellness theme, which gives HR and operational leaders something they can run beyond awareness days. His R.O.C.K formula, trademarked and built out across the book Mental Rockstar, gives audiences a named structure to take into Monday morning rather than a motivational hit that fades by the weekend. He is the first speaker in Asia to hold the Certified Speaking Professional designation from Asia Professional Speakers Singapore, a credential held by fewer than 5% of professional speakers worldwide. His material is built from a corporate insider lens. As a former lawyer and investment banker, he speaks to the specific pressure profile of finance, professional services, and high-output commercial environments rather than to a general wellness audience. He brings an Asia-anchored perspective on mental fitness, which matters for regional headquarters, APAC workforces, and global firms whose employee mental health programmes have so far been designed in the US or UK. Biography highlights First speaker in Asia to earn the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation from Asia Professional Speakers Singapore. Author of Mental Rockstar: How to build mental toughness, face your fears, embrace change and unleash greatness (2020), built on the trademarked R.O.C.K formula. Certified by the International Sports Science Association and the Mental Toughness Research Institute (USA). Hosts the Mental Toughness for Business segment on MONEY FM 89.3, Singapore’s business radio. Former lawyer and investment banker with more than fifteen years working with corporate audiences on resilience, stress, and peak performance. Named recipient of Asia’s Innovation Leadership Award (2022), Asia’s Best Brands Award (2018), and the Global Brands Awards (2017). Biography Employee mental health has become an executive line item without becoming an executive capability. Most large employers now report a wellbeing programme, an EAP contract, and a calendar of awareness moments. Engagement scores, attrition, and presenteeism keep telling a different story. YuJin Wong works at exactly that gap. His material treats mental fitness the way operational leaders already treat physical fitness or safety, as a set of trainable behaviours with measurable inputs, not a campaign about awareness. The trademarked R.O.C.K formula, set out across his 2020 book Mental Rockstar, gives organisations a named structure to teach, repeat, and reinforce inside teams. His credibility with commercial audiences comes from inside the room rather than outside it. Before mental fitness work, he was a corporate lawyer and then an investment banker, before a personal collapse pushed him to rebuild around resilience and peak performance training. That history is why his material reads to finance, professional services, and sales leaders as a description of their environment, not an external commentary on it. The institutional signal is clear. He was the first speaker in Asia to earn the Certified Speaking Professional designation from Asia Professional Speakers Singapore, a credential held by fewer than 5% of professional speakers globally. He holds further certifications from the International Sports Science Association and the Mental Toughness Research Institute in the United States, and hosts the Mental Toughness for Business segment on MONEY FM 89.3, Singapore’s business radio station. Key speaking topics Mental fitness as an organisational capability Resilience and stress mastery for commercial environments Peak performance under sustained pressure Burnout prevention in high-output workforces Confidence and self-leadership for senior individual contributors Mental toughness for sales and revenue teams Ideal for CHROs and heads of wellbeing redesigning mental health programmes beyond awareness campaigns Sales leadership and revenue teams operating under sustained quota pressure APAC regional leadership and global firms briefing mental fitness work for Asian workforces Professional services and financial services firms managing burnout risk inside high-output teams Audience outcomes A working understanding of mental fitness as a trainable capability rather than a mood or trait The R.O.C.K formula as a shared vocabulary for teams to use after the session A specific read on the stress and burnout signals that precede performance loss Practical behaviours for sustaining output under pressure without normalising overwork Confidence that mental health work can be taken back into the organisation as a leadership task, not a clinical referral

Why organisations work with Oli France He brings continuously updated, documented evidence rather than a single career anecdote. The Ultimate Seven Project, currently mid-sequence, gives every keynote a fresh expedition reference point that has happened in the last twelve months. His material is built around named, verifiable terrain, including Iraq’s highest peak, militia-controlled forest in DR Congo, the Aleppo region of Syria, and the 405-mile solo crossing of frozen Lake Baikal hauling a 60kg sledge. The Death Valley to Denali expedition, a 3,588-mile, 64-day journey covered by BBC, The Times and National Geographic, gives the keynote a credible decision-making case study with real, named risk variables. He is the founder of Wild Edge and host of The Wild Edge Podcast, which means his speaking content is built on conversations with operators in extreme environments, not borrowed leadership theory. He works fluently across formats: small executive groups, conference audiences of 500-plus, and virtual delivery, with named bureau credits across UK and European corporate, healthcare, and industrial buyers. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and qualified Winter Mountain Leader, holding a BA in Outdoor Leadership and the British Mountain Leader summer and winter awards. Author of The Trail of the Mountain Folk (2017), based on a 108-day solo winter crossing of the mountainous spine of Asia from Hong Kong to Istanbul, covering eleven countries and fourteen mountain climbs. Founder of Wild Edge, host of The Wild Edge Podcast. Currently completing The Ultimate Seven, a world-first series of human-powered journeys from lowest point to highest summit on each continent, being filmed by True to Nature for broadcast. Death Valley to Denali, 3,588 miles in 64 days, the first person this century to complete the journey by human power. Coverage in BBC, The Times, National Geographic and Red Bull. Has led expeditions in over 75 countries including Iraq, DR Congo, Somalia, Socotra, Siberia, Tajikistan, and the Aleppo region of Syria. Biography Lac Assal in Djibouti is the lowest point on the African continent. Kilimanjaro is the highest. Oli France cycled and climbed the 1,636 miles between them in 28 days, the first leg of an ongoing world-first sequence called The Ultimate Seven. The South America leg followed in January 2025, 1,730 miles from Laguna del Carbon to Aconcagua in 34 days, through 49 mph Patagonian winds and 43-degree desert heat. The pattern matters because it is not a single career chapter. France runs a continuously updated expedition record, each leg of the project giving him fresh, documented material on planning under unknowns, leading small teams through compounding risk, and holding composure when the route ahead is genuinely unclear. The Death Valley to Denali leg in spring 2024 was covered by the BBC, The Times, National Geographic and Red Bull. His credentials sit underneath the work, not in front of it. France is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, holds a BA in Outdoor Leadership and both summer and winter British Mountain Leader awards. His first book, The Trail of the Mountain Folk, was published in 2017 after he travelled overland alone from Hong Kong to Istanbul across the spine of Asia in winter, eleven countries and fourteen mountain climbs over 108 days. He founded Wild Edge to lead small groups into hard-to-reach terrain, and hosts The Wild Edge Podcast, where he interviews operators working at the extreme end of human performance. For senior audiences, the value is specific. France gives leadership teams a decision-making case study with real, named consequences: minefields, militia, illness, dehydration, weather windows that close inside an hour. The keynote is built for groups looking to test how their own composure holds up when the comfortable version of the plan stops working. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained pressure High-performing teams in remote and high-risk environments Decision-making with incomplete information Self-leadership and composure Expedition planning and risk management Vision, commitment and ambitious goal-setting Ideal for Executive leadership offsites and CEO summits where the brief calls for a credible non-management voice on resilience and judgement Sales kick-offs, all-hands and conference keynotes seeking a specific expedition narrative rather than generic motivational content Programme leads responsible for high-stakes change rollouts, restructures or operational pressure points After-dinner and award ceremony slots where authority and storytelling matter equally Audience outcomes A working language for composure: how senior people hold their judgement together when the plan stops cooperating A specific, recent expedition case study attendees can reference with their own teams afterwards A reset on what counts as an obstacle and what counts as a decision under uncertainty A renewed appetite for ambitious, defensible goals tied to a credible planning method

Why organisations work with Liz Jackson She has been on both sides of the table: founder of a B2B marketing firm she ran for 17 years, and now Sales & Marketing Director at M&A advisor BCMS, where she works with owner-managers through valuation, growth-to-sale, and the transition into life after exit. She runs The Fellows Group, a network of more than 200 entrepreneurs who have already sold their companies through BCMS. Few speakers can draw on a live, operational community of post-exit founders for their material. Her credibility on resilience is earned, not borrowed. She lost her sight at 25, the same year she founded Great Guns Marketing, and built the business into a multi-site national operation while blind. The MBE in 2007 was for services to business, not for personal story. She turns the conversation about disability and inclusion into a problem-solving conversation. Her framing, that disabled people develop unusually strong problem-solving instincts because they have had to, gives leadership teams a sharper lens on adversity and capability than the standard inclusion talk. Biography highlights MBE, 2007, for services to business Honorary doctorate, Staffordshire University, 2012 Founder, Great Guns Marketing, a national B2B telemarketing business she led for 17 years Sales & Marketing Director, BCMS (Initium Corporate Finance), advising owner-managers on sale and transition Host of The Fellows Group, a network of 200+ entrepreneurs who have exited their businesses through BCMS Featured on Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire Author of StartUp!, published by Pearson Prentice Hall Biography Great Guns Marketing was launched in 1998 by a 25-year-old with no degree, a £1,000 grant and a £4,000 loan from The Prince’s Trust. The same year, its founder lost her sight. Over the next 17 years the business grew into one of the UK’s leading B2B telemarketing firms, with offices across England, Scotland and Ireland. That arc is the foundation of Liz Jackson’s commercial credibility, but it is no longer her main subject. As Sales & Marketing Director at BCMS, the M&A advisor for owner-managed businesses, she now sits inside the transactions she once would have been on the other side of, coaching founders through valuation, growth-to-sale and the life that begins the day the cheque clears. She also hosts The Fellows Group, a network of more than 200 entrepreneurs who have exited their companies through BCMS. It gives her a working evidence base on what actually changes for founders after a sale, the parts that are well rehearsed and the parts that are not. That material sits behind her work on entrepreneurship, growth strategy and exit planning, and it is what distinguishes her from speakers whose entrepreneurial story stopped at the founding moment. Jackson’s MBE, awarded in 2007 for services to business, and her honorary doctorate from Staffordshire University in 2012 are the public markers of that record. The Channel 4 Secret Millionaire appearance and her book StartUp!, published by Pearson Prentice Hall, are the points where her story has reached a broader audience. Inside a leadership room, her sharpest material is on how owner-managers can run a business now with the discipline of a business that will one day be sold. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Growth strategy for owner-managed businesses Sale readiness and post-exit transition Sales and B2B customer acquisition Resilience and adversity in business building Disability, problem-solving and inclusion Networking and founder community Ideal for Owner-managers, founders and shareholder-directors of mid-market businesses M&A advisors, private equity portfolio companies and corporate finance audiences Sales and commercial leadership teams in B2B businesses DEI and leadership audiences seeking a substantive voice on disability and capability Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what running a business “to be sold” actually looks like operationally, not just financially Specific insight from a network of 200+ post-exit founders on what makes the transition succeed or fail A sharper framing of disability and adversity as a source of commercial problem-solving capability A direct account of how a national B2B business was built, and sustained, by a founder operating without sight

Why organisations work with Angie McQuillin Gives technically strong managers the specific behavioural tools to hold difficult conversations they currently avoid, not a theory of why those conversations matter. Works the seam between imposter syndrome and assertiveness where most confidence training stops short: what to say, how to say it, and how to hold the line when pushed back on. Psychology degree and MBTI-certified, with 15+ years inside corporate HR at Boeing, Imperial Tobacco and Camelot, so the behavioural science lands in language an operating leader recognises. Track record as a keynote for mixed senior and emerging-leader audiences, including the BOSS Leaders of the Future Conference and in-house programmes at Disney, EasyJet, Amazon, Barclays and KPMG. Sessions are designed as interactive workshops, not lectures, so participants leave with scripts and techniques they can test the next working day. Biography highlights BSc (Hons) in Psychology and certified MBTI Practitioner. 15+ years in corporate HR and international staffing, including roles across Boeing, Imperial Tobacco and Camelot. Keynote speaker and workshop lead for Walt Disney, EasyJet, KPMG, Barclays, Amazon, Bath University, Jumio and Norcan Petroleum. Announced keynote speaker at the BOSS Leaders of the Future Conference, Birmingham. Coaching practice focused on confidence, assertiveness, imposter syndrome, conflict resolution and leadership communication. Biography Most confidence programmes stop at the mindset. They tell people to back themselves and leave them there. The harder problem, what to actually say in the moment a senior colleague pushes back, a peer oversteps, or a direct report underperforms, is where careers get made or quietly stall. Angie McQuillin builds her work at exactly that point. Trained in psychology with a BSc (Hons) and certified as an MBTI Practitioner, she spent 15 years inside corporate HR and international staffing at Boeing, Imperial Tobacco and Camelot before moving full time into coaching and speaking. That HR background matters. She has sat in the rooms where promotion decisions get made and watched capable people lose ground because they could not have one specific conversation. Her sessions translate that pattern into behaviour. Managers and emerging leaders learn how to raise a concern without apologising for it, handle pushback without escalating, and hold a position under pressure. Imposter syndrome, assertiveness and conflict are treated as linked problems rather than separate workshops. Client rosters reflect the range: Walt Disney, EasyJet, KPMG, Barclays, Amazon, Bath University, Jumio and the keynote slot at the BOSS Leaders of the Future Conference in Birmingham. The register is interactive rather than inspirational. Audiences leave with scripts and techniques they can test in their next meeting, which is the test that matters to the HR directors and L&D leads who hire her. Key speaking topics Self-confidence and imposter syndrome Assertive communication Leadership communication Conflict resolution and difficult conversations Growth mindset Resilience under pressure Personal impact and influence Ideal for CHROs, L&D directors and talent leads building emerging-leader and first-time manager programmes. Women’s leadership networks and ERGs addressing confidence, voice and visibility. Technical and functional leadership populations where communication is the bottleneck to promotion. Organisations running culture work on feedback, psychological safety and conflict norms. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the conversations they currently avoid, including pushback, performance and boundary-setting. Specific techniques for handling imposter syndrome as it arrives, not as an abstract concept. A clearer read of their own communication defaults under stress and what to adjust first. Confidence grounded in behaviour they can repeat, not a temporary lift from the room.

Why organisations work with Brandon Williams He brings a Human Factors academic record alongside the cockpit story. Fifteen years teaching the discipline at university level means his frameworks are the ones aviation safety regulators use, translated for boards and operating teams. His Just Culture model gives leaders a usable answer to the question of how to hold people accountable without destroying the candour that surfaces problems early. Most safety and conduct programmes fail on exactly this trade-off. His structured debrief practice converts incidents and near misses into organisational learning at a pace most corporate retros cannot match. It is the operating ritual fighter squadrons use to improve every cycle. His audience is the leadership team that has run out of patience with motivational speakers and wants the actual mechanism: clear intent, situational awareness, mutual support, decision-making under uncertainty. He has tested these frameworks with operating leadership at Deloitte, Northwell Health, Baptist Health, Global Atlantic Financial and Hertz, not only on conference stages. Biography highlights US Air Force Academy graduate and decorated Lieutenant Colonel, United States Air Force. F-15E fighter pilot with hundreds of combat hours over Iraq and Afghanistan. Captain at a major US commercial airline and serving US Air Force Safety Officer. Adjunct professor of Human Factors at university level for approximately 15 years. CEO and Founder of Lead-Tac, a leadership development firm. Client engagements include Deloitte, Hertz, Northwell Health, Baptist Health, Global Atlantic Financial, National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions. Biography Aviation worked out how to make high-stakes teams perform reliably under conditions of uncertainty long before the corporate world had a vocabulary for it. The cockpit runs on Human Factors, Just Culture, structured debrief and disciplined situational awareness. Brandon Williams spent two decades inside that system as an F-15E fighter pilot, decorated Lieutenant Colonel and US Air Force Safety Officer, then another fifteen years teaching the underlying discipline as a university adjunct. The work he does with senior leadership teams is the translation layer. Lead-Tac, the firm he founded, takes the operating mechanics of the cockpit, clear intent, mutual support, debrief, accountability without blame, and rebuilds them for boards, operating teams and frontline leaders carrying the weight of a complex business. His Just Culture framework addresses the most common failure mode in corporate accountability. Punish the error and the next one stays hidden. Excuse the error and standards collapse. He shows leaders the structured middle path that aviation has used to drive incident rates down for forty years, and how to install the equivalent in a commercial operating environment. His client list, Deloitte, Northwell Health, Baptist Health, Global Atlantic Financial, Hertz, the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions, runs through sectors where decision quality under pressure is the constraint on performance. That is the room he is built for. Key speaking topics Leadership under uncertainty and complexity Human Factors in high-performing teams Just Culture and psychological safety Decision-making under pressure Structured debrief and operating-rhythm learning High-reliability organisations Situational awareness for senior teams Safety leadership and accountability Ideal for C-suite and operating leadership in regulated, high-consequence sectors (healthcare, financial services, energy, industrial). Chief Safety Officers, Heads of Operational Risk and quality leadership building a Just Culture programme. Sales and commercial leadership teams operating under volatile market conditions. Boards seeking a working model for accountability that protects candour. Audience outcomes A working definition of Just Culture and a clear test for whether their organisation has one. The Human Factors lens on why competent teams still make predictable errors under load. A structured debrief method usable inside their own operating rhythm from the following Monday. Language for situational awareness, mutual support and clear intent that gives senior teams a shared vocabulary under pressure. A direct read on the difference between aviation-grade reliability practice and the safety theatre most corporate programmes default to.

Why organisations work with Caitriona Ellis She connects employee financial wellness directly to retention, giving HR and reward leaders a way to frame money support as a workforce outcome rather than a soft benefit. Her credentials as a qualified financial adviser mean the content stands up to scrutiny, which matters when an employer is putting financial guidance in front of staff. She speaks from a first-person recovery from serious financial difficulty, so audiences who feel quietly ashamed about money see someone credible who has been where they are. Her programmes are CPD-accredited, giving an employer external assurance that the material has been independently quality-checked before it reaches employees. Biography highlights Qualified financial adviser with an honours Commerce degree and a career background in the banking sector. Founder of the Financial Wellness Academy, running structured financial wellbeing programmes for individuals and organisations. Buy-to-let property investor who acquired six properties remotely in the North East of England within a single 12-month period. Fellow of the National Estate Agents Association, with a Level 4 qualification in Residential Estate Agency. Programmes are CPD-accredited, independently quality-assured for content. Regular speaker and podcast guest on financial wellness, including Institute of Directors International Women’s Day events and International Women Connected. Biography Money is the wellbeing problem most employers leave out. Mental health and physical health have a place in the corporate programme; financial anxiety, which sits underneath both, usually does not. Caitriona Ellis built her work in that gap, founding the Financial Wellness Academy to bring structured financial education to people who carry money stress quietly. Her authority rests on two things that rarely sit together. She is a qualified financial adviser with an honours Commerce degree and a banking background, so the technical content is sound. She has also worked her own way out of serious financial difficulty, which is why audiences who feel exposed about money tend to trust her rather than tune out. That credibility extends into practice. She is an active buy-to-let property investor who acquired six properties remotely in the North East of England inside a year, and a Fellow of the National Estate Agents Association. Her programmes are CPD-accredited, giving employers external assurance that what reaches their staff has been independently checked. For an organisation, the argument she makes is concrete: employees who feel in control of their money are easier to keep. She frames financial wellbeing as a retention lever, the part of the employee relationship that engagement surveys miss and exit interviews reveal too late. Key speaking topics Employee financial wellbeing Financial literacy and money confidence Financial wellbeing and staff retention Women and money Personal resilience and financial recovery Property investment and income diversification Ideal for CHROs, reward, and benefits leaders building or reviewing an employee wellbeing programme. Employee resource groups and women’s networks running financial confidence sessions. Organisations whose staff are visibly affected by cost-of-living pressure and financial stress. Audience outcomes Audiences leave able to name the first practical steps to take control of their own finances, regardless of starting point. Employees who felt isolated about money see that the problem is common and addressable, lowering the shame that keeps it hidden. HR and reward attendees leave with a clearer case for treating financial wellbeing as a retention issue, not a perk. Audiences gain a basic working understanding of income diversification and longer-term financial planning.

Why organisations work with Naomi Schiff She has performed at the level she talks about. Schiff drove in the inaugural W Series in 2019, won the 2014 Clio Cup China Series with seven victories in ten races, and finished second in class at the 2018 24 Hours of Nürburgring. Lived authority is uncommon in the inclusion speaking circuit. The Sky Sports F1 analyst role is current. She is in the F1 paddock during race weekends, conducting on-grid interviews and post-session analysis. The examples she uses with corporate audiences come from this season. The W Series Diversity and Inclusion Ambassador title is a structured external credential. The W Series itself was designed to give female drivers a competitive route toward Formula 1, so the inclusion conversation she leads is rooted in operational reality. Bilingual in English and French, with broadcast credits across Sky Sports and Canal+. Useful for European corporate audiences and for events that need a host-fluent presence in both languages. Biography highlights Sky Sports F1 analyst and presenter; full-time on the channel since 2023 W Series Diversity and Inclusion Ambassador, appointed 2020 Inaugural W Series competitor, 2019 2014 Clio Cup China Series champion with seven wins from ten races Second in class at the 2018 24 Hours of Nürburgring Co-presented the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 W13 launch with Natalie Pinkham, 2022 Biography Few performance environments are as exposed as elite motorsport. At Le Mans or the Nürburgring, the car either makes the lap or it does not, and the data is in the public record by the next morning. There is no committee, no PR layer between driver and result. When the W Series launched in 2019 as the first single-seater championship structured exclusively for female drivers, places on the grid were tightly contested. Schiff was selected for the inaugural season and appointed the championship’s Diversity and Inclusion Ambassador the following year. Her racing record runs across continents. The 2014 Clio Cup China Series, won with seven victories in ten races, brought a five-year contract with a German team. They raced the KTM X-Bow GT across the European GT4 series and 24-hour endurance events. At the 2018 24 Hours of Nürburgring, considered alongside Le Mans the most punishing endurance race in the world, she finished second in class. From 2022 she joined Sky Sports F1 as analyst and presenter, co-presenting the Mercedes-AMG Petronas W13 launch with Natalie Pinkham. She went full-time on the channel in 2023. When online abuse questioned her racing credentials in 2022, Lewis Hamilton publicly defended her place on the Sky team, and the broader F1 paddock followed his lead. Key speaking topics Diversity, equity and inclusion in male-dominated industries Performance under pressure Mental resilience and recovery Women in sport and motorsport High-performance team culture Broadcast hosting and event moderation Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads, and women’s leadership networks in male-dominated sectors such as engineering, automotive, energy and financial services Sponsor activation events and brand-led keynotes connected to motorsport or premium sport Conference programmes that need a host or moderator with current F1 access and bilingual capability Audience outcomes A direct view of how the W Series was structured to create a competitive pathway for female drivers, and what that suggests for pathway design inside corporate organisations Specific examples from the F1 paddock of how teams handle pressure and make decisions at speed A sharper sense of what it costs to be the only woman in a high-performance professional environment, drawn from working experience A current take on the F1 ecosystem and how it manages performance and representation