Resilience & Stress Management speakers

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 corporate sessions carry no product sales or advice agenda, which lets an employer put financial guidance in front of staff without the conflict of interest that adviser-led content usually brings. 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. Delivers keynotes, workshops, and financial wellbeing programmes to employers, behaviour-led and free of any product or advice agenda. 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 corporate sessions carry no product sales or advice agenda, so an employer can offer staff real financial guidance without the conflict that adviser-led content invites. 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 Cameron Atlas The keynote runs on a documented framework. The Edge of Possible® sets out three pillars, Be Clear, Be Bold and Be Unshakable, with nine performance accelerators underneath, delivered to leadership teams as a half or full day session or across twelve months. His TEDxRoma talk “What Future Are We Creating?”, hosted on TED.com, was built around a performance involving 80 musicians from 40 countries, assembled over eight months. The talks address composure and decision quality for people running organisations through continuous change. The keynote sits on top of a working coaching practice. He runs The Edge of Possible High Performance Program with CEOs, founders, and high-performing teams, so the material is tested with clients who buy it as implementation work. He performs original music live on grand piano and acoustic guitar, offered as a closing segment where the audience suits it. Biography highlights Delivered the closing talk at TEDxRoma, “What Future Are We Creating?”, now featured on TED.com National Geographic Explorer; director of Samaná: The Last Free Flowing River of Antioquia, a documentary on the dam projects threatening Antioquia’s last free-flowing river Host of The Edge of Possible, featured as a top 100 self-improvement podcast on Apple Podcasts Performs live on grand piano and acoustic guitar as an optional closing segment, using original material written on the themes of the talk Runs The Edge of Possible High Performance Program, delivered to executive teams and as a private engagement for founders and CEOs Grew up on a farm in outback Australia in a graduating class of 11; now speaks internationally across multiple continents Biography The closing talk at Italy’s largest TEDx event, “What Future Are We Creating?”, was a performance eight months in the making, involving 80 musicians from 40 countries. It is now hosted on TED.com. Cameron Atlas organised it, and now works with leadership teams on the same question the talk asked: what people are capable of when they stop defaulting to what feels safe. The content is written for senior teams running through continuous change. The Edge of Possible® sets it out in three parts: Be Clear on purpose and direction, Be Bold enough to act before conditions feel safe, and Be Unshakable in the habits that hold performance under pressure. He has run this work with CEOs, founders, and high-performing teams for more than 15 years, delivered as a half or full day session or across twelve months. Where the audience suits it, he closes on grand piano or acoustic guitar, playing songs he wrote on the themes he has just spoken to. He also hosts The Edge of Possible, featured as a top 100 self-improvement podcast on Apple Podcasts, which covers what it takes to work past a comfortable ceiling. He grew up on a farm in outback Australia in a graduating class of eleven, and still sets the kind of goals he asks audiences to set. At 35 he put 2,000 hours into learning guitar in the first 500 days. At 41 he is training to compete in pickleball. Key speaking topics Adaptability as a performance discipline Resilience and decision-making under sustained change Composure and clarity for senior leaders Creative collaboration at scale High performance under sustained pressure Live music as an optional keynote format Ideal for CEOs, founders and executive teams running through continuous restructure or strategic change Leadership conferences and annual summits looking for a closing keynote with emotional weight Sales kick-offs and partner conferences booking an opening or closing keynote HR and people-function audiences working on resilience, wellbeing and high-performance culture Audience outcomes A clearer language for what composure under pressure looks like in senior roles A reset on the difference between motion and focus when teams are exhausted by change Where the format includes it, original music performed live in the room, written on the themes the session covers The default patterns that quietly limit progress, named and worked through in the session

Why organisations work with Carl Honoré He makes a specific, testable claim that most management culture resists: that slowing down is not a productivity concession but a competitive advantage, and he has two decades of cross-sector evidence to support it. His Slow Fix framework gives organisations a direct alternative to short-termism in problem-solving, not as a philosophical preference, but as a structured approach to decisions that actually hold. On ageing and the workforce, he converts a topic most organisations treat as a compliance or HR issue into a commercial argument: mixed-age teams outperform across measurable metrics, and ageism is a business risk, not just a social one. His work sits at the junction of two urgent organisational pressures – sustainable performance culture and the longevity economy – giving him a rare dual relevance for leadership teams and people functions simultaneously. As the originator of the Slow Movement – a framework covered by the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist and Time, among others – he brings a level of intellectual ownership that very few speakers in the workplace culture space can claim. Biography highlights Author of In Praise of Slow (2004), Under Pressure, The Slow Fix, and Bolder – published in 36 languages, with bestseller listings across multiple countries Two main-stage TED Talks – “In Praise of Slowness” and “Why We Should Embrace Aging as an Adventure” – with combined views in the millions In Praise of Slow described by the Financial Times as the foundational text of the Slow Movement Journalist whose work has appeared in The Economist, Observer, National Post, Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, and Time Named 2024 Advocate for Aging by Next Avenue and the American Society on Aging Creator and presenter of BBC Radio 4 series Status by Carl Honoré; previously presented The Slow Coach for BBC Radio 4 and Frantic Family Rescue for ABC TV Australia Bolder selected as BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and Reader’s Digest (UK) Book of the Month Graduated from the University of Edinburgh; reported across Europe and South America for over a decade before turning to books Biography Speed and youth are the two defaults of modern organisational culture. Carl Honoré has built a career and a global movement on the argument that both are miscalibrated, and that the evidence for changing them is stronger than most organisations acknowledge. In Praise of Slow (2004), the book that gave the Slow Movement its name and its intellectual framework, made a counterintuitive claim: that choosing when to be fast, rather than defaulting to fast, is a more reliable route to performance. The Financial Times placed it as the foundational text of the movement. His third book, The Slow Fix, extended that argument into problem-solving, building the case that organisations addicted to quick responses consistently underperform against those willing to invest time in diagnosis and depth. His more recent work, anchored in Bolder, applies the same analytical lens to age. The demographic case for rethinking older workers is well-established in research; the cultural and commercial case is Honoré’s contribution. His argument that ageism functions as a form of the same bias toward speed and novelty that distorts organisational decision-making, connects the two strands of his work into a coherent framework for leaders. In 2024, that work was recognised by both Next Avenue and the American Society on Aging, who named him an Advocate for Aging. Trained as a journalist at The Economist, Observer, and Time, among other outlets, Honoré brings a mode of inquiry to organisational topics that is grounded in evidence gathered across cultures and sectors, not in a single industry or institutional context. His two main-stage TED Talks have been viewed millions of times; his books are published in 36 languages. Key speaking topics Pace as organisational strategy The Slow Movement and workplace performance Multigenerational workforce design Ageism as a commercial risk Sustainable performance and decision quality The Slow Fix: problem-solving under pressure Status, hierarchy, and organisational culture Longevity and the future of work Ideal for CHROs and people leaders designing age-inclusive workforces and addressing talent retention across generations CEOs and senior leadership teams examining whether performance culture is undermining the quality of decisions and the depth of problem-solving Boards and executive committees navigating the commercial implications of ageing demographics and multigenerational customer bases Culture transformation leads and change management functions rethinking pace, productivity, and sustainable output Audience outcomes A clear framework for diagnosing where organisational speed becomes a liability – in decision-making, leadership, and creative work Evidence-based understanding of why multigenerational teams outperform and what structural changes enable that performance A reframed view of ageism as a commercial and strategic problem, not only a social or legal one Practical approaches drawn from the Slow Fix framework for tackling complex problems without defaulting to short-term solutions Greater awareness of the connection between pace culture and youth bias – and why addressing one typically requires addressing both

Why organisations work with Caspar Berry Berry’s argument has a mathematical foundation, not just a motivational one: every decision is an allocation of scarce resources under uncertainty, and the mathematics of that process produce outcomes that are counterintuitive and consistently misread by leaders operating on instinct and habit. He makes the case, grounded in decision-making science, not poker storytelling, that risk aversion is not conservatism but a measurable source of underperformance; organisations leave value on the table not by taking too many risks but by taking the wrong ones for the wrong reasons. The poker metaphor functions as a precision instrument: it makes uncertainty undeniable in a way that corporate language typically suppresses, which creates genuine permission for leaders to reexamine how they decide rather than simply defending what they have always done. Berry has taken this framework to audiences at RiskMinds International (the senior financial risk conference) and to the UK Home Office leadership, demonstrating that the argument holds at both the technically demanding and the culturally complex ends of the risk conversation. Over 400 Mind Gym training sessions and more than 2,500 keynotes across 30 countries have stress-tested and refined the material against organisations from Google and KPMG to Morgan Stanley and Barclays, audiences where the argument must be robust, not just engaging. Biography highlights MA in Economics and Anthropology, Cambridge University Professional poker player, Las Vegas: three years competing against leading professionals on the circuit Co-founded Twenty First Century Media; built to 40 people; sold to Bob Geldof’s Ten Alps Plc in 2008 Poker adviser on the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale; co-presenter of Sky Poker and host of Poker Night Live Trainer, The Mind Gym: over 400 sessions delivered to 100+ companies Contributor, Financial Risks Today, on behavioural risk and decision-making, for financial risk professionals TEDxAcademy: “Dealing with Uncertainty”; featured speaker, RiskMinds International ‘Best New Speaker’, Academy of Chief Executives, 2008; Fellow of the RSA Over 2,500 speeches and workshops in 30+ countries; clients include Google, IBM, KPMG, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, PayPal, Shell and the UK Home Office Biography Caspar Berry studied economics at Cambridge, spent three years as a professional poker player in Las Vegas, built and sold a media company, and then built one of the more rigorous arguments in the speaking world for why most organisations are making worse decisions than they think. The career arc is unusual. The intellectual case it produces is the point. The core argument is mathematical before it is motivational. Berry treats every decision as an investment; an allocation of scarce resources under conditions of uncertainty. Decision-making science, he argues, reveals a set of counterintuitive implications that consistently lead intelligent leaders astray: some decisions that feel prudent are quantifiably expensive; some that feel reckless are simply the rational choice. Poker, where uncertainty is undeniable and unambiguous, is the vehicle through which those implications become accessible. After Las Vegas, Berry co-founded Twenty First Century Media, built it to 40 staff and sold it to Ten Alps Plc. He spent several years as a trainer at The Mind Gym (over 400 sessions across more than 100 companies) before establishing his own practice. He has since delivered over 2,500 keynotes and workshops in more than 30 countries, for clients ranging from Google, IBM and PayPal to Morgan Stanley, Barclays and the UK Home Office. He has spoken at RiskMinds International alongside senior financial risk professionals and contributes to Financial Risks Today on behavioural risk and decision-making. Berry holds a Fellowship of the RSA and was named Best New Speaker by the Academy of Chief Executives in 2008. His TEDxAcademy talk on uncertainty has been cited by investment firms as a reference point for decision-making under ambiguity. The argument is neither a poker book nor a leadership manifesto. It is a framework for thinking about risk – and it is specific enough to be genuinely useful. Key speaking topics Risk-taking and decision-making under uncertainty The mathematics and psychology of risk Organisational risk culture and innovation Intuition, judgement and cognitive bias in high-stakes decisions Calculated risk as competitive strategy Fear of failure and long-term performance Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive boards examining risk appetite, innovation culture, or strategic decision-making Strategy and transformation leads responsible for shifting how their organisations act under uncertainty Financial services, professional services, and consulting firms where risk literacy is commercially material Conference programmers building around leadership, performance, or organisational resilience Audience outcomes A reframing of risk: from a hazard to be minimised to a resource to be understood and allocated deliberately Working understanding of how decision-making science applies to everyday business choices; including the counterintuitive implications most leaders have never been taught Greater awareness of how intuition and cognitive bias distort risk assessment, and practical means of compensating Organisational language and permission to discuss risk appetite at leadership level with precision rather than generality A renewed confidence to act under uncertainty rather than waiting for a certainty that will not arrive

Why organisations work with Caspar Craven His Big Bold Mindset® and Big Bold Circle give leadership teams a named, structured framework for changing how they think and act under pressure, not a set of borrowed principles, but a system built and tested through his own experience of pursuing extreme goals in commercial and offshore environments. His background as a KPMG Associate Director and CFO, including a technology business exit to a listed company, grounds the material in commercial and financial reality, making it credible with boards, finance teams and senior executive audiences, not only culture or L&D audiences. The argument he makes is unusual: that the behaviours required to hold a team together on a two-year ocean voyage are the same behaviours that determine whether a leadership team delivers or stalls, and he can evidence that claim from both sides of the equation. The Big Bold Circle’s 20 principles connect individual mindset to team behaviour to organisational execution, giving buyers a framework that extends beyond the event into coaching, offsites and leadership programmes. Organisations including Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Boston Consulting Group and Burberry rebook him, evidence that the material holds up under repeated use with commercially sophisticated audiences. Biography highlights Author of three Bloomsbury-published books: Where the Magic Happens, Be More Human: Rethinking the Rules of High-Performance Teamwork, and The Big Bold Mindset: Re-thinking the Rules of Leadership Former Associate Director at KPMG; former CFO in the technology sector, including a business sold to Private Equity Built, scaled and sold a technology business to a stock market listed company Team leader on trophy-winning yacht in the BT Global Challenge (2000/01) Captain of family circumnavigation (2014/16), leading a crew that included three children under ten Speaker for global organisations including Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Boston Consulting Group, Burberry, Standard Life and BAE Systems Biography Most leadership teams do not lack ambition. They lack the thinking that holds when ambition meets sustained pressure. Caspar Craven has spent three decades studying that gap, in FTSE-boardroom pressure, in the execution risk of building and selling a technology business, and in the conditions of offshore sailing, and building the frameworks that close it. His commercial background is foundational. As an Associate Director at KPMG and then CFO of a technology business sold to Private Equity, Craven worked inside the financial and strategic pressures that boards and senior leadership teams actually face. He then built and exited his own technology company, selling it to a listed firm for a seven-figure sum. That sequence – corporate discipline, then ownership, then entrepreneurial risk – is the basis of his credibility with finance, commercial and executive audiences. The two round-the-world sailing voyages are not adventure narrative. The first, as a team leader on a trophy-winning yacht in the BT Global Challenge (2000/01), tested leadership under competitive pressure and physical exhaustion. The second (2014/16), as captain of a family crew including three young children, tested something harder: sustaining shared values, clear roles and collaborative decision-making over two years in an environment where the cost of poor leadership is immediate and real. Both voyages provided the evidence base for the frameworks he now teaches. That evidence base is formalised in the Big Bold Mindset® and the Big Bold Circle, 20 principles connecting individual mindset to team behaviour to organisational execution, published across three Bloomsbury books. The framework has been applied with leadership teams at Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Boston Consulting Group, Burberry and Standard Life, among others. The core argument is practical: that the gap between ambitious goals and actual delivery is a thinking and behaviour problem, and that it can be addressed systematically. Key speaking topics Leadership mindset and behavioural change High-performance team dynamics Goal-setting and execution under pressure Decision-making in uncertainty Resilience and organisational adaptability Entrepreneurship and business growth Culture change and human-centred leadership Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive committees setting ambitious growth or transformation targets CHROs and L&D leaders designing leadership development programmes, particularly for high-potential talent or senior cohorts Commercial and sales organisations at annual kick-offs or strategic resets Boards and C-suite audiences navigating significant change, M&A, or sustained performance pressure Audience outcomes A named, structured framework (The Big Bold Mindset® and Big Bold Circle) applicable immediately to their own goals, team dynamics and leadership behaviours Clearer understanding of why leadership teams stall under pressure, and what specifically needs to change in how they think and make decisions Practical approaches to aligning teams around ambitious goals, reducing execution friction and sustaining momentum through setbacks A shared vocabulary for discussing leadership mindset and team behaviour that moves beyond generic or abstract concepts Renewed confidence in pursuing bold goals, grounded in evidence and principle rather than motivation alone

Why organisations work with Cathy O’Dowd Her central argument that internal team dynamics, not the external environment, are the primary source of failure in high-performing groups, is drawn from specific, documented expeditions and maps directly onto the decisions senior leadership teams are already wrestling with. The 1996 South African Everest expedition provides one of the most detailed public case studies of a high-performing team collapsing through ego and power-play, then recovering to reach the summit. That arc of breakdown, diagnosis and recommitment is the substance of the work. Her participation in the 2012 Mazeno Ridge expedition on Nanga Parbat (a first ascent of a 10-kilometre ridgeline that had defeated ten previous international expeditions) provides a tested model for executing ambitious objectives when the plan meets an unpredictable environment and must adapt in real time. She makes a specific, counterintuitive claim: that most failures in extreme environments are self-created. This challenges how many organisations locate and manage risk, and gives leaders a different set of questions to ask of their own teams. As a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association of UK/Ireland and recipient of its highest honour, the Professional Speaking Award of Excellence, she brings the structural rigour of a career speaker to content that has been tested in front of senior corporate audiences across 46+ countries. Biography highlights First woman to summit Everest from both its south (1996) and north (1999) sides – an unmatched record in mountaineering history First South African to summit Everest; member of the First South African Everest Expedition (1996) Fourth woman to climb Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest mountain (2000) Participant in the 2012 Mazeno Ridge expedition on Nanga Parbat – a first ascent of one of the last major unclimbed lines on an 8,000-metre peak; the summit pair were awarded the 2013 Piolet d’Or Author of Just for the Love of It; co-author of Everest: Free to Decide Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association of UK/Ireland; recipient of the Professional Speaking Award of Excellence, the PSA’s highest honour Master’s degree in Journalism, Rhodes University; former university lecturer Professional speaker for 27+ years; presented to organisations in 46+ countries on six continents Biography Most teams of ambitious, capable people contain the seeds of their own failure. Not because the external environment defeats them, but because the competition between high-performers: the very drive that brought them to the room, erodes the collaboration they need to succeed. Cathy O’Dowd watched this happen in real time, at altitude, with lives in the balance. O’Dowd became the first woman to summit Everest from both its south and north sides, completing the south-side ascent in 1996 and returning for the north in 1999. What formed her thinking was not the summits but the crisis that preceded the first: the in-fighting, power-plays, and near-disintegration of a team that had every credential to succeed. Her analysis of that expedition: what broke, what was rebuilt, and how the team reached the top despite itself, is the foundation of her corporate work. Her second major case study is the 2012 Mazeno Ridge on Nanga Parbat, a 10-kilometre Himalayan ridgeline that had repelled ten previous international expeditions. The six-person team committed to a first ascent with no existing blueprint and had to adapt in real time as the plan met a complex, unforgiving environment. Two teammates completed the ascent and were awarded the 2013 Piolet d’Or, mountaineering’s most prestigious prize. O’Dowd uses this expedition as a model for executing ambitious objectives when certainty is unavailable and the original plan cannot hold. A Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association of UK/Ireland and recipient of its Professional Speaking Award of Excellence, she has presented in 46+ countries over 27 years. She holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from Rhodes University, where she also lectured. Her presentations are built not on inspiration but on diagnosis: specific, transferable analysis of why high-performing groups succeed and fail under pressure. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure High-performance team dynamics Leadership in high-stakes environments Executing ambitious plans under uncertainty Resilience, failure, and recovery Risk, responsibility, and the limits of control Adapting strategy when execution meets reality Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams navigating high-stakes decisions under uncertainty Organisations running ambitious transformation, innovation, or change programmes Leadership conferences centred on team performance and organisational resilience Boards and executive committees examining risk, accountability, and decision-making frameworks Audience outcomes A specific diagnostic framework for understanding why high-performing teams fail from within, not from outside Practical analysis of how ego, competition, and communication breakdown manifest under pressure, and how to interrupt those patterns A case-study model for adapting ambitious plans when execution meets an unpredictable environment A reframed understanding of organisational risk: internal dynamics as a primary variable, not just external conditions Greater clarity on what leadership under genuine uncertainty looks and feels like, drawn from real decisions with irreversible consequences

Why organisations work with Cedric Dumont His performance model comes from environments where a lapse in judgement is fatal. More than 11,000 skydives and 2,500 BASE jumps sit behind what he teaches about decision-making under pressure. A degree in High Performance Psychology gives him the mechanism behind the experience: what a fear response does to attention, and what conditions restore it. In wingsuit flight, flow is the operating condition for survival. He teaches leaders the attention and emotional-regulation practices that produce it. The Courage, Focus and Trust framework he speaks on has been in print since Dare to Jump in 2020, so organisations can embed it in a development programme rather than treating the keynote as a one-off. He works in English, French and Dutch, which makes him practical for European leadership events that cross language and market. Biography highlights Red Bull athlete since 2000 and a pioneer of BASE jumping and wingsuit flying, with more than 11,000 skydives and 2,500 BASE jumps, three X Games appearances, third place in the Skysurfing World Cup and a win at the Brazilian Open of Skysurfing Records include the first BASE jump from the Vilnius TV Tower, Lithuania’s tallest structure, in 2009, the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado (384m) and the Jin-Mao Tower in Shanghai (431m) Flew the first wingsuit flight witnessed by the Great Pyramids of Giza in January 2015, filmed by Red Bull as Leap of Wonder Degree in High Performance Psychology, with over a decade coaching elite athletes and advising organisations Author of Dare to Jump (Lannoo Campus, 2020) and Defy Gravity (Lannoo Campus, 2025, distributed in the US by Simon & Schuster) Clients include PwC Belgium, Brussels Airport, Le Pain Quotidien, Spadel and Groupe Mestdagh Biography Vilnius TV Tower had never been BASE jumped before 2009. Cedric Dumont went off it with a toilet roll as his only means of reading the wind, falling for four seconds before the parachute opened. Shanghai’s Jin-Mao Tower at 431 metres and the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado followed, and in January 2015 he flew the first wingsuit flight witnessed by the Great Pyramids of Giza. More than 11,000 skydives and 2,500 BASE jumps sit behind those records. He has been a Red Bull athlete since 2000 and holds a degree in High Performance Psychology. Three decades in environments with almost no margin for error have gone into working out why some people think clearly there and others do not. In wingsuit flight, flow is the condition under which the jump is survivable. Dare to Jump, published by Lannoo Campus in 2020, sets out three skills he argues are trainable: a boundless mindset, sharp focus, and trust inside a team. Defy Gravity followed in 2025, distributed in the US by Simon & Schuster. The claim across both books is that emotional regulation and sustained attention under stress are built deliberately, the way an athlete builds them. He has taken this work to CEOs and senior teams across Europe, including PwC Belgium, Brussels Airport, Le Pain Quotidien, Spadel and Groupe Mestdagh. His TEDx talks are “You flow or you die” at TEDxUHasselt and “When Women Succeed, We All Win” on TED.com. He works in English, French and Dutch. Key speaking topics High-performance psychology under pressure Flow state and peak cognitive performance Fear management and intelligent risk-taking Decision-making under pressure Resilience and emotional regulation Attention management and deep focus Energy management and sustainable performance Trust and team performance Ideal for Senior leadership teams carrying an organisation through transformation or prolonged uncertainty CHROs and L&D leads building performance and resilience capability across a leadership population High-potential cohorts in executive development programmes Intact leadership teams where trust and candour are the constraint on performance Audience outcomes A model of what stress does to attention and judgement, and what reverses it Emotional-regulation techniques for use in high-stakes meetings and decisions A working definition of flow and the conditions that reliably produce it Language for building trust inside a team so that problems surface early A clearer view of the gap between knowing what to do and doing it under pressure, and methods for closing it

Why organisations work with Chad Foster He pairs a personal resilience story with a Fortune 500 sales record, which means he lands with revenue leaders, not only HR and culture audiences. The Blind Ambition Framework gives sales and operating leaders a structured five-step model rather than an inspirational set piece, and it has been delivered to 175,000+ attendees across six continents. He is credible on technology and commercial execution because he built the first CRM software for visually impaired users, a project Oracle had judged impossible. His Harvard Business School leadership credential, the first awarded to a blind executive, gives buyers cover when programming a resilience speaker for senior commercial audiences. Named client list includes Google, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Caterpillar and Nestle Purina, which signals comfort with the standards of large enterprise commercial events. Biography highlights First blind executive to graduate Harvard Business School’s leadership program. Author of Blind Ambition: How to Go from Victim to Visionary, HarperCollins Leadership, 2021. Creator of the Blind Ambition Framework, a five-step methodology applied across sales, leadership and culture programmes. Fortune 500 finance and sales executive credited with directing strategies tied to $45 billion in technology contracts. Built the first CRM software for visually impaired users. Keynote clients include Google, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Caterpillar, Nestle Purina and Amgen. Biography Resilience as a commercial topic has a credibility problem. Most speakers in the category sit on the personal side of the stage, helpful for a culture day, harder to programme into a sales kickoff or a senior leadership offsite. Chad Foster sits on the other side of that line. Foster lost his eyesight at twenty-one and went on to become the first blind executive to graduate from Harvard Business School’s leadership program. He then spent his career inside Fortune 500 technology companies, directing financial and sales strategies tied to $45 billion in contracts and building the first CRM software designed for visually impaired users, a project Oracle had said was not feasible. His book, Blind Ambition: How to Go from Victim to Visionary, was published by HarperCollins Leadership in 2021 and sets out the Blind Ambition Framework, a five-step methodology now used inside Google, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Caterpillar and Nestle Purina. He has delivered it more than 200 times to over 175,000 attendees across six continents. The reason buyers programme him into senior commercial settings is that the framework is presented as an operating discipline for performance under pressure, not a story about overcoming adversity. The personal account is the proof. The argument is about how leaders sustain judgement and revenue when the conditions stay hard for longer than the playbook assumes. Key speaking topics Resilience as a commercial leadership capability Performance under sustained pressure Sales leadership and revenue under disruption Mindset and decision-making for senior teams Inclusion and diversity as competitive advantage Change leadership and culture under strain Ideal for Sales kickoffs and CRO-led revenue events Senior leadership offsites and executive development programmes Culture, inclusion and people leadership conferences with a commercial audience Technology and financial services firms running multi-year transformation Audience outcomes A structured five-step framework for sustaining performance through disruption. A clearer language for resilience that travels into a sales and commercial setting. Specific tools for reframing setbacks into operating decisions. Renewed conviction at senior level on the link between mindset and revenue performance.

Why organisations work with Charlene Douglas A clinically trained therapist, not a wellbeing presenter. Diplomas in Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychosexual Studies (2018), BACP-registered, with a private practice in London behind every session she delivers. Public credibility from Channel 4’s Married at First Sight UK gives her unusual reach into employee audiences who would tune out a more traditional speaker, without diluting the substance of what she covers. Author of Come Closer (Penguin Random House / DK, 2024), a published synthesis of the communication, intimacy and self-awareness frameworks she uses with clients, available as anchor content for follow-on workshops. Talks about boundaries, communication and stress with the directness of a working therapist, which lands differently inside organisations than corporate wellbeing language usually does. Brings a Black woman entrepreneur’s lens to belonging and imposter syndrome conversations, drawn from her own practice rather than from a DEI framework deck. Biography highlights Sex and relationship therapist on Channel 4’s Married at First Sight UK since 2021. Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling, Highgate Counselling Centre (2018). Diploma in Psychosexual Studies, Centre of Psychosexual Health (2018). Registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). Author of Come Closer: Everything You Ever Wanted to Ask a Sex and Relationship Therapist (Penguin Random House / DK, 2024). Founder of private practice The Intimacy Coach; broadcast and podcast credits include Good Morning Britain, Steph’s Packed Lunch, E4’s The Sex Clinic, and The Referral with Dr Karan. Biography Most workplace wellbeing programmes are built around the individual. The relationships people are inside, with managers, peers, and themselves, are where the strain actually shows. That is the territory Charlene Douglas has worked in for almost a decade as a clinically trained therapist, and it translates more directly into team performance than the wellbeing industry usually admits. Douglas qualified through the Highgate Counselling Centre in psychodynamic counselling and the Centre of Psychosexual Health in psychosexual studies, both in 2018. She is registered with the BACP and runs The Intimacy Coach, a private practice working with individuals and couples in London and online. The clinical grounding is what separates her from the broader category of relationship commentators. Channel 4 brought her onto the expert panel of Married at First Sight UK in 2021, which has given her a public platform that few therapists with comparable credentials have. She has used it to publish Come Closer with Penguin Random House in 2024, a book that captures the communication and self-awareness work she does with couples and adapts it for a general reader. For corporate audiences, she draws on the same clinical material to talk about boundaries, communication, stress, and the quiet ways relationships at work erode under pressure. Her own experience as a Black woman building a private practice and a public profile feeds directly into how she handles questions of belonging, voice, and confidence with senior audiences. Key speaking topics Communication and boundaries at work Stress, self-care and burnout prevention Resilience, wellbeing and mental health Team dynamics and psychological safety Belonging and imposter syndrome Leadership with empathy Inclusion and the lived experience of difference Ideal for HR, People and Culture leaders building wellbeing programmes that need clinical credibility Employee resource groups and women’s networks, including events centred on women of colour Internal communications and town hall events seeking a recognisable name with substantive content Leadership development cohorts working on empathy, listening and difficult conversations Audience outcomes A clearer language for what good and bad communication look like in everyday work relationships Practical boundary-setting techniques drawn from clinical practice rather than self-help Direct frameworks for managing stress and protecting personal capacity under sustained pressure A more honest conversation about belonging and confidence that does not retreat into corporate DEI vocabulary

Why organisations work with Charles Clark A first-person account of a career ending in a single training session, used to give audiences a concrete frame for setbacks they are currently sitting with. Habit and goal-setting tools (Thrive Planner, Recap Journal) that give attendees something to take back to their desk on Monday rather than a feeling that fades by Wednesday. A book catalogue covering self-therapy, team dynamics, and personal goal design, which lets buyers match the talk to a sales kickoff, a wellbeing day, or a leadership offsite. Comfort across audience types: Fortune 500 sales teams, professional sports organisations, and college and military audiences, all referenced in his published client list. Biography highlights 3-time NCAA National Champion and 10-time All-American at Florida State University. Ranked 6th in the world over 100m at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin. Author of “Become Your Ideal Self: How to Heal Through Self Therapy” and “Guide to Thrive.” Creator of the Thrive Planner goal-setting system and the Recap Journal. Host of the Thrive Tribe Podcast on mindset, business, and athletic development. Speaking and training engagements referenced with Nike, Amazon, Google, NFL, MLB, NCAA, Raymond James, Johnson & Johnson, Pepsi Co, and the US Army. Biography A 99% tear in the right quadriceps ends a sprinter’s career. For Charles Clark, it ended a track career that had already produced three NCAA titles, ten All-American honours, and a sixth-place finish at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin. The injury removed the only professional path he had built for. What replaced it was a deliberate second discipline. Clark studied habits, goal design, and recovery from setback, then built tools around them: the Thrive Planner, the Recap Journal, and a set of books beginning with “Guide to Thrive” and “Become Your Ideal Self.” Each is a practical product, not a memoir. That practicality is what corporate buyers are responding to. Clark works with sales organisations at Raymond James, Frontier Communications, and Pepsi, with sports bodies including the NFL, MLB, and NCAA, and with military and education audiences. The story opens the room. The planner-and-habits content gives people something to do with what they heard. Clark’s work fits an organisation that has tried wellbeing weeks and motivational posters and wants something with a real exercise attached. He is not a leadership theorist. He is a performer who learned a second craft after the first one was taken away, and who teaches the second one with the same discipline. Key speaking topics Personal resilience after setback Habit design and goal-setting Mindset and mental health for high-pressure roles Sales-team motivation and kickoff energy Team culture and relationship-building Performance under pressure Ideal for Sales kickoffs and annual conferences in commercial organisations. Wellbeing days and mental health weeks where leaders want substance over slogans. Professional sports organisations and high-performance environments. College, university, and military audiences working on resilience and personal development. Audience outcomes A specific reframe for the setback the audience is currently sitting with, drawn from Clark’s own career-ending injury. A working set of habit and goal-setting tools attendees can apply the next day. Language for talking about mental health and personal performance inside a commercial culture. Practical decisions about where attention, energy, and recovery time should go in the next quarter.

Why organisations work with Charlie Rocket A first-person reinvention story with hard credentials behind it: Grammy win as 2 Chainz’s manager at Street Execs, then a public health and athletic transformation rather than a curated brand exercise. The Nike «Dream Crazy» connection gives the keynote a culturally recognisable anchor. The Kaepernick spot won the 2019 Outstanding Commercial Emmy, and audiences place the story instantly. He moves a room emotionally without leaving it there. The Dream Machine Foundation gives the talk a working example of putting ambition into operational practice, not just rhetoric. He pairs naturally with leadership offsites, sales kick-offs, and culture moments where the brief is not analysis but a step-change in energy and self-belief at the top of the organisation. Biography highlights Founder of the Dream Machine Foundation, a non-profit funding individual dreams, small businesses and community recovery projects since 2018. Former CEO of Street Execs, the artist management company behind 2 Chainz, with a Grammy win to his name during that period. Featured in Nike’s «Dream Crazy» campaign with Colin Kaepernick, winner of the 2019 Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Commercial. Endurance athlete: marathon finisher and Ironman finisher following a documented health turnaround that included losing approximately 125 lbs. Profiled by CNN in its Turning Points series on his decision to leave the music business to focus on health. Speaks internationally on reinvention, mindset and culture for corporate audiences across sectors. Biography A music executive walks away from a multimillion-dollar artist management business at 31 because his body has stopped cooperating. That is the hinge moment in Charlie Rocket Jabaley’s story, and the reason it lands in corporate rooms. He had built Street Execs into the company behind 2 Chainz, taken home a Grammy, and was, by his own account, 300 lbs and out of road. What he did next is what makes the talk usable for organisations rather than just moving. He treated his own life as a turnaround project. He lost roughly 125 lbs, became a marathon and Ironman finisher, and ended up in Nike’s «Dream Crazy» advertisement with Colin Kaepernick, the spot that won the 2019 Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Commercial. CNN profiled the decision in its Turning Points series. The corporate keynote sits on top of that arc. The argument is straightforward: ambition is a renewable practice, and most senior teams have quietly let theirs decay under operational load. He extends the personal frame outward through the Dream Machine Foundation, which has been funding individual dreams and small business launches since 2018, as a working proof that the discipline scales beyond one person. The fit is specific. This is a speaker for moments when a leadership group, a sales force, or a culture programme needs a step-change in energy and self-belief, with credible substance behind the inspiration. It is not a research keynote. It is a reinvention keynote with the receipts. Key speaking topics Personal reinvention and mindset Resilience after health and career shock Culture shift and team ambition Purpose-driven leadership Storytelling and brand-led motivation Philanthropy and impact Ideal for Leadership offsites and CEO summits opening or closing on a culture moment Annual sales kick-offs and revenue team gatherings Employee experience and wellbeing programmes that need a credible voice on resilience Foundation, ESG and corporate responsibility events where the brief calls for substance behind the inspiration Audience outcomes A vivid case for treating personal ambition as a leadership discipline, not a private matter Specific behavioural anchors he has used in his own reinvention, transferable into team practice A reset on what individual leaders are willing to ask of themselves and their teams A working model, the Dream Machine Foundation, of how ambition becomes operational rather than aspirational

Why organisations work with Charlie Whyman A working B2B marketing operating model. The OTTER Framework gives commercial teams a five-step planning structure that ties objectives to tools, training, expectations and review, used inside her consultancy and her current managing director role. Operator credibility, not consultant theory. She runs a specialised aviation services business as managing director of TGIS Aviation, so her commercial advice lands as something already being applied at the top of a P&L. A point of view on customer curiosity as a commercial discipline. Her podcast, The Curiosity Key, and her speaker work argue that better questioning of customers is the input that most B2B marketing teams skip and most commercial strategies depend on. A direct route into the experience of women leading in male-dominated commercial sectors. She has built her career across automotive, mining, shipping and aviation, and speaks credibly to organisations trying to move that conversation past slogans. Biography highlights Managing Director, TGIS Aviation Ltd, appointed 2024 Founder, Curious B2B Marketing, 2017 Creator of the OTTER Framework, a five-step B2B marketing planning system Host, The Curiosity Key podcast Founder, Palmavera, an award-winning Sardinian olive oil business, 2006 Keynote speaker, BHBIA Annual Conference 2025 Biography Most B2B marketing functions are full of activity and short of insight. Campaigns get built before customer questions get asked. That gap is what Whyman has spent the last decade attacking, first through her consultancy Curious B2B Marketing and now through the OTTER Framework, a five-step planning structure that forces objectives, tools, training, expectations and review into one commercial conversation. She is unusual in pairing that practitioner work with an operating role. In 2024 she was appointed Managing Director of TGIS Aviation, a UK firm specialising in airworthiness management for aircraft and engine owners. The appointment came from inside the client base, after she ran the growth strategy as a consultant. It puts her on the board of a niche commercial business while she continues to teach and speak. Her career sits across sectors most marketers avoid: automotive, mining, shipping and aviation. She founded an award-winning Sardinian olive oil business in 2006, weathered redundancy twice, and built Curious B2B Marketing in 2017. She hosts The Curiosity Key podcast, where the recurring argument is that intentional curiosity about customers is the cheapest, most under-used commercial input available to B2B leaders. For organisations, the value is direct. She is a serving managing director with a structured method, a clear position on what marketing is for, and the lived experience of a woman leading in industries that do not naturally make space for her. She talks to commercial teams as one of them, and to leadership audiences as someone who has just come from the P&L. Key speaking topics B2B marketing strategy and operating systems Customer curiosity as a commercial discipline Sales and marketing alignment for commercial leaders Courage and action in career and commercial decisions Women leading in male-dominated industries Growth strategy in specialist B2B firms Ideal for CMOs, marketing directors and B2B commercial leaders CEOs and managing directors of specialist or technical SMEs Sales and marketing leadership teams under pressure to prove pipeline impact Industry conferences in engineering, manufacturing, life sciences and aviation Audience outcomes A clear test for whether a current marketing plan is built on customer insight or assumption The OTTER Framework as a working structure for B2B marketing planning A sharper position on how curiosity, questioning and customer research feed commercial strategy Practical language for talking about courage and action when career or commercial decisions stall A perspective on visibility and influence for women operating in male-dominated commercial environments