Resilience & Stress Management

Why organisations work with Julie Gautier A first-hand discipline of working under physiological pressure that few keynote speakers can credibly claim. Two French records in constant weight freediving, minus 68 metres on a single breath, are evidence of a practice, not an anecdote. A creative body of work that translates the discipline into something an audience can feel. Ama, shot in a single breath in the world’s deepest pool, has reached a wide international audience and has become a reference point for how breath, focus and stillness are cultivated. Direct relevance to leadership audiences asking how to stay composed under public scrutiny, scrutiny markets, board pressure or crisis. The mechanism she describes is concrete: how the breath is trained, how attention is held, how panic is metabolised before it becomes decision. A second register of value for organisations working on creativity, environmental purpose, or the relationship between people and the natural world. Her films sit inside that conversation rather than next to it. Biography highlights Two French records in constant weight freediving, minus 65 metres (2006) and minus 68 metres (2007). Co-founder of Les Films Engloutis, the production label behind her underwater work. Writer and director of Ama, performed in a single breath in the Y-40 deep pool, Italy. Co-director and writer of the underwater music video for Beyoncé and Naughty Boy’s “Runnin’ (Lose It All)” (2015). Director of One Breath Around the World, featured in National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase. TEDxLausanneWomen speaker, December 2019, “Inspiration in the Absence of Breath”. Biography Holding the breath is a trained skill, not a held-back reflex. Gautier worked on it for nine years as a competitive freediver, including two French national records in constant weight, before stepping out of the sport in 2009. The discipline she learned, working with the breath rather than against it, is the substance she now brings to leadership audiences. Her second career has been as a director and performer in underwater cinema. With Guillaume Néry, she co-founded Les Films Engloutis, the label behind films including Narcose, Ocean Gravity and One Breath Around the World, the last of which was carried by National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase. She also co-directed and wrote the underwater music video for Beyoncé and Naughty Boy’s “Runnin’ (Lose It All)”. Ama, released on International Women’s Day in 2018, is the work that brought the practice into the cultural conversation. It is a single-breath performance in the Y-40 deep pool in Italy, choreographed and performed by Gautier herself. It has been read as a piece on grief, on women’s resilience, on the management of pressure, on the value of stillness. It is not a metaphor for any of those things. It is the discipline made visible. For a corporate audience, the relevance is direct. Senior leaders are working in conditions where composure has become a performance variable. Gautier’s contribution is not motivational language. It is a description of how a person who has practised breath and attention under real physiological constraint actually does it, and what transfers when the audience walks out of the room. Key speaking topics Breath, focus and composure under pressure Self-leadership and emotional regulation Creativity drawn from natural environments Personal discipline and long-form practice Ocean storytelling and environmental purpose Ideal for Senior leadership offsites where composure under public pressure is a stated theme Cultural and inspirational segments of conferences for boards, executive committees and partner audiences Wellbeing, performance and people-function summits looking for substantive content on breath and attention Brand, creative and sustainability events where ocean storytelling has natural anchor Audience outcomes A concrete account of how breath is trained as a tool for focus, not as a wellness motif A vocabulary for talking about composure as a learned practice rather than a personal trait Visual material, drawn from her films, that audiences continue to discuss after the session A working frame for how stillness, patience and humility translate into professional performance

Why organisations work with Dr Tess Morris-Paterson She has carried the same performance methodology through three of the most demanding operating environments in the world: Premier League football, NASA-aligned spaceflight research, and a Royal Engineers command. Few practitioners have a comparable triangulation. She designs the actual selection criteria for human spaceflight, so her view on how to assess composure, judgement and team fit is grounded in systems that are used to decide who flies. Her research on microgravity physiology and astronaut training has been recognised by the International Astronautical Federation, the Aerospace Medical Association and NASA’s Human Research Program. She talks to executives the way she talks to operators, with no astronaut mythology and no sports-cliche residue. The transfer to commercial settings is direct. She is credible on inclusion in male-dominated environments without leaving the performance frame: five years as one of three women in the Premier League, and an officer corps that is roughly five percent female. Biography highlights Chartered Scientist; PhD, King’s College London, Centre of Human and Aerospace Physiological Sciences. Visiting scientist, NASA Ames Research Center; alumna of the International Space University. Founder of a consultancy supporting international space agencies on astronaut selection and training. Award recipient of the International Astronautical Federation, the Aerospace Medical Association and NASA’s Human Research Program; named a 2019 Emerging Space Leader. Former Head of Performance across Premier League football, the Football Association, Women’s Super League, McLaren Formula One, and Olympic and Paralympic programmes. British Army Reserve Officer, Royal Engineers, with command of a unit of up to 100 personnel. Biography Astronaut crews are not the most talented people in the room. They are the people most likely to make the right call on the worst day of the mission, and the selection process is built to find that. Morris-Paterson designs that kind of process for international space agencies, and the same logic now informs how she advises commercial leadership teams. She came to spaceflight through elite sport. For five years she was one of three women operating at Head of Performance level in the Premier League, with later work spanning the Football Association, the Women’s Super League, McLaren Formula One, and Olympic and Paralympic programmes. The shared question across those settings was always the same: what conditions reliably produce a good decision when there is no margin for a bad one. That question carried into her research. As a chartered scientist trained at NASA Ames Research Center and the International Space University, her work on microgravity physiology and astronaut training has been recognised by the International Astronautical Federation, the Aerospace Medical Association and NASA’s Human Research Program, and she was named a 2019 Emerging Space Leader. She now runs a consultancy that supports astronaut selection and training for international space agencies. A third operating environment sharpens the picture. As a British Army Reserve Officer in the Royal Engineers, she has held command of a unit of up to 100 personnel. The combination matters because her arguments about leadership under pressure are not assembled from secondary sources. They come from environments where the cost of getting it wrong is direct, measurable, and sometimes irreversible. Key speaking topics Performance under extreme conditions Astronaut selection, training and human spaceflight Team design and decision-making in elite sport Leadership in male-dominated operating environments Resilience and recovery in high-stakes work Translating elite-performance methodology into commercial settings Ideal for Executive teams and boards facing decisions where error cost is high and recovery time is short CHROs and chief talent officers redesigning selection, assessment and leadership-development pipelines Leadership audiences in defence, aerospace, energy, financial services and elite sport Programmes focused on women progressing in male-dominated technical or operational fields Audience outcomes A working model for how high-stakes operators are selected, not just trained Specific selection signals that predict composure and judgement under load A clearer view of how elite teams in sport and spaceflight handle feedback, recovery and the cost of error Evidence-based language for talking about inclusion in technical environments without losing the performance frame Transferable practices from astronaut, Premier League and military preparation that hold up in commercial settings

Why organisations work with Kevin Fong He has run the actual command-and-control work organisations rehearse in tabletop exercises: seconded to NHS England as National Clinical Advisor for Emergency Preparedness during COVID-19, embedded with the British Military Emergency Response Team in Afghanistan, and active on a UK air ambulance crew. He brings a tested method for high-pressure decision-making drawn from anaesthesia, prehospital medicine and human spaceflight, sectors where the standards for crew performance are explicit and audited. His Apollo and Apollo 13 work for the BBC, including the World Service podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon, is built from primary interviews with the controllers and astronauts who made the calls. The case material is specific, not anecdotal. He holds a serious clinical and academic post (UCLH consultant; UCL professor; co-director of CASE Medicine), so his framing of human limits and team performance survives scrutiny by technical audiences. He was appointed OBE in 2019 for services to medicine and healthcare, and delivered the 2015 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on space medicine, a platform with a high bar for clarity and authority. Biography highlights Consultant anaesthetist, University College London Hospitals; Professor of Public Engagement and Innovation, UCL. Co-director, Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine (CASE Medicine), UCL. National Clinical Advisor in Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response, NHS England (COVID-19 secondment, from March 2020). HEMS doctor, Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex; previously embedded with British Military Emergency Response Team, Afghanistan; alumnus of NASA’s human spaceflight programme, Johnson Space Center. Presenter, 2015 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (BBC Four); host of BBC World Service podcasts 13 Minutes to the Moon and 13 Minutes Presents: Apollo 13. Author, Extremes: Life, Death and the Limits of the Human Body (Hodder). OBE, 2019, for services to medicine and healthcare. Biography The Apollo 11 lunar module ran out of usable computer memory in the final minutes of its descent. The crew had thirteen minutes to reach the surface or abort. The decision to land was made by a flight director who had spent his career rehearsing exactly that kind of call. Fong’s BBC World Service series 13 Minutes to the Moon was built from first-hand interviews with the controllers and astronauts who made it work, and it is the clearest expression of what his speaking practice is actually about. The thread runs through his clinical career. As a consultant anaesthetist at UCLH, a HEMS doctor with Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex, and a clinician embedded with the British Military Emergency Response Team in Afghanistan, he has spent his working life inside the systems that train teams to function when the cost of error is immediate. In March 2020, he was seconded to NHS England as National Clinical Advisor in Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response, working at the centre of the COVID-19 response and the vaccine rollout. The academic infrastructure underneath the speaking is substantive. He is a professor at UCL and co-director of the Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine, with degrees spanning astrophysics, medicine and engineering and a long association with NASA’s human spaceflight programme at Johnson Space Center. The book Extremes and the 2015 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures sit on top of that record, not in place of it. What he gives a corporate audience is a translation. The protocols that make space crews, trauma teams and air ambulance services reliable under extreme strain are not analogies for business leadership; they are concrete practices that can be examined and adopted. The 2019 OBE recognises a body of work that already crosses medicine, science and public communication, which is why his sessions land with technical leaders, not only general audiences. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure High-performing teams in safety-critical environments Crisis leadership and command Pandemic response and healthcare resilience Human spaceflight and extreme environment medicine Risk and human factors Leadership lessons from Apollo Ideal for CEOs, COOs and crisis leadership teams preparing for low-probability, high-consequence events Boards and risk committees stress-testing operational resilience and command structures Leadership development programmes for clinical, aviation, energy, defence and infrastructure organisations Conferences for senior medical, scientific and engineering audiences who reject generic motivational content Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for human factors, crew resource management and command structure that can be applied inside their own organisations Specific, named case material from Apollo 11, Apollo 13 and the COVID-19 response, used to interrogate how their own teams would behave A clearer view of where their organisation is rehearsed and where it is improvising under pressure Renewed conviction in the operational standards that distinguish reliable teams from the rest

Why organisations work with Abigail Ireland She bridges two audiences most performance speakers cannot. As a Chartered Banker who originated private equity deals before retraining as a Master Personal Trainer and nutrition coach, she speaks to a finance or executive room without losing them on the physiology, and to an operational room without losing them on the commercial logic. The Performance Advantage methodology gives clients a single framework that covers mindset, energy, and focus rather than three separate vendor relationships for coaching, wellbeing, and productivity. Practical content rather than inspiration. Sessions translate into specific changes an executive can apply to a working week: sleep, nutrition, recovery, focus blocks, calendar discipline. Track record with demanding corporate environments including The Walt Disney Company, Discovery, Lloyds Banking Group and Lyft, where the brief is sustained output under pressure, not motivational lift. Biography highlights Chartered Banker (MCBI) with a First Class BSc (Hons) in International Management Former private equity professional and international banking strategy and business management lead Creator of the Performance Advantage methodology, used in keynotes, workshops and coaching engagements Master Personal Trainer (Australian Institute of Fitness), Pn2 Precision Nutrition Coach, NLP Practitioner, Mind Gym Coach, DISC Practitioner Corporate clients include The Walt Disney Company, Discovery, Lloyds Banking Group and Lyft Contributor and featured expert across GQ, HR Magazine, ILM publications, Skillshare, AAT, ACCA Student Accountant, NatWest, and CMI Workplace Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes are built on the assumption that the workforce needs encouragement. Senior leadership teams need something different. They need to know how to operate at high cognitive load, week after week, without their judgement or stamina degrading. That is the operational question Abigail Ireland’s work addresses. Her route to the question is unusual. She began in private equity deal origination, then moved into international strategy and business management roles in banking, qualifying as a Chartered Banker along the way. The shift into peak performance was not a pivot away from finance. It was a recognition that the performance variable inside those firms was personal, not structural, and that nobody was treating it with the same rigour as a transaction. The Performance Advantage methodology is the result. It treats mindset, energy, and focus as a single integrated system, drawing on her training as a Master Personal Trainer, Precision Nutrition coach, NLP Practitioner, and Mind Gym coach. The content is calibrated for senior corporate audiences, with named clients including The Walt Disney Company, Discovery, Lloyds Banking Group, and Lyft. What separates her sessions from the broader wellbeing market is the level of specificity. Audiences leave with concrete adjustments to their week, not a renewed commitment to self-care. The work has been picked up by GQ, HR Magazine, ILM, CMI Workplace, and ACCA Student Accountant. Key speaking topics Peak performance psychology Energy and recovery for senior leaders Focus and productivity under cognitive load Mindset and limiting beliefs Sustainable high performance Wellbeing as a performance lever Personal effectiveness and time discipline Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive committees facing sustained delivery pressure CHROs and heads of talent commissioning wellbeing or performance content for high-demand functions Partner and managing director cohorts in professional services, banking and law Sales and deal teams where individual stamina materially affects revenue Audience outcomes A clear set of changes an executive can apply to their week across sleep, nutrition, recovery, and focus A working model for treating mindset, energy, and focus as one system rather than three separate problems Practical methods to manage cognitive load and avoid output decline under pressure Language and frameworks senior leaders can use to discuss performance with their own teams

Why organisations work with Alan Stein Jr. Direct working access to Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and Kobe Bryant during their formative years gives him firsthand observation of how the highest performers in modern basketball actually prepare, not the version told in interviews. Three published books (Raise Your Game, Sustain Your Game, Next Play) form a connected curriculum on individual performance, sustained output without burnout, and focus discipline. Leaders can extend a keynote into a longer programme. Translates athletic preparation into language a corporate audience already uses. Sales teams, retail operators, and frontline managers leave with habits they can run on Monday morning. Repeat client list crosses retail, financial services, healthcare, and franchise operations: American Express, Pepsi, Under Armour, Starbucks, Charles Schwab, Orangetheory Fitness. The material travels across sectors. Biography highlights Performance coach at the LeBron James Skills Academy and the Jordan Brand Classic Trained Stephen Curry in the month before the 2009 NBA Draft Author of Raise Your Game (Hachette), Sustain Your Game (Hachette Book Group), and Next Play (Amplify Publishing, 2025) Foreword to Raise Your Game by ESPN analyst Jay Bilas, who also features on the Next Play audiobook Corporate clients include American Express, Pepsi, Under Armour, Starbucks, Charles Schwab, Orangetheory Fitness Host of the Raise Your Game podcast Biography The best basketball players in the world are not the most physically gifted people in the room. They are the most prepared. Alan Stein Jr. spent fifteen years inside that preparation as a basketball performance coach, training Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and Kobe Bryant during the years their habits were being formed. That access is the substance of his work. As a coach at the LeBron James Skills Academy, the Jordan Brand Classic, and Mike Jones’s DeMatha programme, Stein watched how elite players approached the unseen hours: warm-ups, recovery, film, the same drills repeated for years. The behaviours were unglamorous and learnable. He now teaches them to senior leaders and their teams. His three books map a single argument across individual, sustained, and focused performance. Raise Your Game (Hachette), with a foreword by ESPN’s Jay Bilas, sets out the habits. Sustain Your Game (Hachette Book Group) addresses stress, stagnation, and burnout. Next Play (Amplify Publishing, 2025) takes Coach K’s two-word philosophy and turns it into a discipline for what to do after a mistake or a win. Corporate clients use the material because it crosses sectors without losing specificity. American Express, Pepsi, Under Armour, Starbucks, Charles Schwab, and Orangetheory Fitness have all booked him. The vocabulary is athletic, but the application is operational: how a sales team prepares for a quarter, how a frontline manager recovers from a bad week, how a leader sets a daily standard the team can see. Key speaking topics Peak performance habits for senior leaders Self-leadership and preparation under pressure Team cohesion and high-performance culture Stress, burnout, and sustained output Sales performance mindset Lessons from elite athletes for corporate leaders Ideal for Sales leaders and chief revenue officers running performance offsites CHROs and L&D leads building leadership development programmes Franchise and retail operations leaders running annual conferences Senior leadership teams resetting standards after a difficult quarter or year Audience outcomes A clear set of preparation habits modelled on how elite athletes actually train Specific routines for managing stress and sustaining performance over a full year, not a quarter A shared vocabulary for accountability and standard-setting that a leadership team can use the next day Concrete examples from named NBA players that make the principles memorable for frontline staff A reframe of “talent” as habit and preparation, useful for managers building younger teams

Why organisations work with Shirley Ballas A live-television presence with nearly a decade on the Strictly judging panel, comfortable hosting awards nights, fundraisers and after-dinner sessions on the same scale as the corporate audiences in front of her. Forty years of performing at the highest level of competitive Latin dance, including ten US Latin American titles and three British Open World titles, gives her a credible voice on sustaining standards over a long career. A working ambassador for the Campaign Against Living Miserably and Suicide and Co, with a personal account of losing her brother to suicide that gives weight to mental health programming inside organisations. President of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing, the institutional credential that distinguishes her from celebrity speakers without a substantive professional body behind them. Biography highlights Head Judge, BBC One Strictly Come Dancing, since 2017. Three-time British Open to the World Latin American Champion; ten-time United States Latin American Champion; 17-time British Open finalist. President of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing. Author of Behind the Sequins: My Life (John Blake, 2020). Ambassador for the Campaign Against Living Miserably and Suicide and Co; Appeal Ambassador for Alder Hey Children’s Charity 7in10 Mental Health campaign. Inducted into the United States and Great Britain Dance Halls of Fame; three-time recipient of the Carl Alan Award. Biography Competitive Latin dance is a brutal long-game discipline. Most champions peak briefly and disappear. By 21, Shirley Ballas had already won nearly every major Latin title available, and she stayed at the top of the international circuit until retiring from competition in 1996. That career produced three British Open World Latin Championships, ten US Latin American titles, and 17 British Open finals across a single division. It also produced the credibility that took her into adjudication and coaching at the highest international level, and on into the President’s chair at the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing. Since 2017, Ballas has been the Head Judge on Strictly Come Dancing, the role Len Goodman vacated. The BBC seat is the live-television equivalent of her competitive career: scored every week by an audience of millions, with no margin for an off night. Her 2020 autobiography Behind the Sequins covers the cost of that life, including a working-class start in Wallasey, two marriages, and the loss of her brother David to suicide in 2003. That loss is the basis for her public mental health work. Ballas is an ambassador for the Campaign Against Living Miserably and for Suicide and Co, and an Appeal Ambassador for Alder Hey Children’s Charity’s 7in10 mental health campaign. Inside corporate rooms her draw is the combination of celebrity recognition and a serious, lived account of resilience and male-suicide awareness. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery from personal loss Performance under pressure Mental health advocacy and male suicide awareness Sustained excellence across a long career Live broadcast and high-profile judgement Event hosting, Q&A and after-dinner Ideal for Awards nights, gala dinners and charity fundraisers seeking a recognisable host with a substantive personal story. Internal corporate events on resilience, wellbeing or mental health, particularly programmes addressing male mental health. Employee engagement and recognition events looking for a high-profile broadcast personality for Q&A or fireside formats. Audience outcomes A first-hand account of staying at standard across four decades of competitive performance and live television. A direct personal perspective on grief, suicide loss and the work of CALM and Suicide and Co. A Q&A or fireside conversation that lands with audiences who know her from Strictly Come Dancing. A glamorous and confident hosting presence for awards, gala or recognition formats.

Why organisations work with Monty Criswell Five number-one country singles across three decades, including “I Saw God Today” for George Strait, “Five More Minutes” for Scotty McCreery and “Hell of a View” for Eric Church, give him a body of work most after-dinner speakers cannot match. His material is built around real songs played live, not slides. The performance element makes the resilience message land with senior audiences in a way a conventional keynote cannot. A stage 3 colon cancer recovery, tied to active support of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, gives the health and recovery thread substance rather than sentiment. Thirty years in a commercial creative industry, with named hits for George Strait, Eric Church, Trace Adkins, Scotty McCreery and Parker McCollum, makes him credible on the realities of sustained creative output under commercial pressure. Biography highlights Co-writer, “I Saw God Today” (George Strait, 2008), CMA Single of the Year; Grammy and Dove nominations. Number-one country singles include “Just Fishin'” (Trace Adkins), “Five More Minutes” (Scotty McCreery, triple platinum), “Hell of a View” (Eric Church, double platinum) and “Handle on You” (Parker McCollum). Two Grammy nominations for Country Song of the Year; multiple BMI and NSAI songwriting awards. Songwriter Session presenter at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville. Publishing history with Hamstein Music Group, Sony/ATV/Tree and currently Spirit Music Group. B.A. American Studies, cum laude, University of Alabama. Biography Country music is one of the few commercial creative industries where the same writer can sustain hits across thirty years. It is also one of the most unforgiving. Hit songs decide careers, and most writers never get one. Monty Criswell has written or co-written five number-one country singles in four different decades, including “I Saw God Today” for George Strait, which won CMA Single of the Year in 2008 and was nominated for a Grammy. The catalogue runs from Trace Adkins to Eric Church to Parker McCollum. “Five More Minutes” for Scotty McCreery went triple platinum. “Hell of a View” for Eric Church went double platinum. The longevity matters more than any single credit. It is what gives him a working theory of how a person keeps producing under commercial pressure when the room around them changes. Halfway through that run he was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. He recovered, returned to writing, and continued to land number ones. He now supports Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and sits with his wife on Vanderbilt’s Canby Robinson Society. The cancer story is not a frame for the talk; it is the second source of evidence behind it. “An Evening with Monty Criswell” is a live performance, not a conference session. He plays the songs, tells the stories behind them, and draws lessons on persistence, craft and recovery from a working life that produced both. For organisations looking for an inspirational close to a conference, an awards dinner or a leadership offsite, the offering is unusual: a credible commercial creative who can hold a room with songs the audience already knows. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after serious illness Sustaining creative output over a long career Storytelling as a leadership tool Persistence in commercially unforgiving industries Country music songwriting craft Faith and personal values in working life Ideal for Conference closing keynotes and gala dinners where an inspirational live performance is required Sales kick-offs and leadership offsites in need of a resilience and persistence anchor Cancer charities, healthcare audiences and corporate wellness events Audiences in the United States with country music affinity, including Nashville-based events Audience outcomes A live experience of how a hit country song is built, told by its writer A first-hand account of stage 3 cancer recovery and the return to high-output work Stories drawn from a thirty-year Nashville career, with named artists and named songs A close that lands emotionally without leaning on a slide deck

Why organisations work with Justin Roethlingshoefer He brings the performance science used to keep professional hockey players on the ice into the language of P&L, calendar pressure and executive fatigue, with frameworks tested over a fifteen-year career across NCAA and NHL environments. His method starts from individual biological data, including bloodwork, HRV and DNA inputs, so the room leaves with personalised next actions rather than a generic wellness playbook. He has built and runs OWN IT Coaching, which means the content is informed by what is currently working with paying executive clients, not theory drawn from a former career. His book The Power of Ownership gives audiences a structured reference point after the keynote, extending the conversation beyond the event. Biography highlights Founder of OWN IT Coaching, a health and performance company serving founders, executives and corporate teams. Fifteen years in elite sport across NCAA and professional hockey, with strength and performance responsibilities tied to the San Diego Gulls and the Anaheim Ducks organisation. Author of four books, including The Power of Ownership, listed as a USA Today bestseller. Master’s in Human Development with a Sport Performance concentration; postgraduate work in HRV, sleep and recovery science. Host of The OWN IT Show podcast and a regular contributor on SimpliFaster and Muscle & Strength. Featured in Fox News, Esquire, USA Today, LiveScience and Well+Good. Biography The cost of high-performance leadership tends to show up in the body before it shows up in the numbers. Sleep degrades, recovery collapses, decisions get slower and shorter, and the wellbeing programme on the company intranet does not touch any of it. That is the gap Justin Roethlingshoefer’s work addresses. He spent fifteen years inside elite hockey, first in the NCAA and then in the professional system, with strength and performance responsibilities tied to the San Diego Gulls in the AHL and the Anaheim Ducks organisation. His job was to keep human beings playing at their physical ceiling across a punishing season, using data on load, fatigue, sleep and recovery. He brought that operating model out of the locker room and into the office. OWN IT Coaching, the company he founded, applies the same approach to executives, founders and corporate teams. The starting point is individual biology, bloodwork, HRV, wearables and DNA testing, with structured coaching on the back of it. His four books, including the USA Today bestseller The Power of Ownership, set out the underlying argument: health is an ownership decision, and senior leaders who treat it that way protect the asset their organisations depend on most. His sports-science training sits behind everything he says, which is what separates him from the wider wellness category. The case he makes to a senior audience is concrete: the same monitoring that keeps a Stanley Cup contender on the ice can keep a CEO sharp through a year that was not built for human pacing. Key speaking topics Executive health and performance Burnout prevention in senior leadership Sleep, recovery and HRV in high-pressure roles Wearables, biometric data and personalised health Ownership as a personal operating principle Health risk in founder-led and high-growth organisations Team performance and resilience Ideal for CEOs, founders and executive committees carrying sustained operational load CHROs and heads of people designing senior leader wellbeing and retention Leadership offsites and partner retreats in professional services Sales and high-performance teams working under structured pressure Audience outcomes A clear separation between generic wellness advice and the variables that actually move executive performance A working understanding of how sleep, HRV, recovery and load data translate into leadership capacity Personal next actions framed as ownership decisions rather than corporate programme tweaks Language to discuss executive health as an organisational asset with boards and HR A reference framework drawn from The Power of Ownership to extend the conversation after the event

Why organisations work with Julia Gentry A coaching track record concentrated in growth-stage businesses in the $10 to $100 million revenue band, where the founder and the leadership team are the same people and personal capacity is the binding constraint. A signature D.R.E.A.M. framework she uses with executive teams to close the gap between stated ambition and the daily decisions that contradict it. Direct authority with women leaders navigating the specific tension between professional ambition and the rest of their lives, written about in her book Dream – I Dare You. A strong following in the US residential real estate sector, where she is repeatedly booked back into the same firms and conferences. Biography highlights CEO and founder of The Dream Factory & Co., leading a team of eight. Author of Dream – I Dare You: A Wake-Up Call to Greater Alignment in Your Faith, Family, Career, and Community and the companion Dream – Workbook. More than a decade coaching executive teams at companies grossing $10 to $100 million annually. Co-founder of six businesses across 16 years as an entrepreneur, including a real estate operation. Named client engagements include Harcourts North America, Total Real Estate Group and Keller Williams agents and brokerages. Creator of the D.R.E.A.M. framework, used in keynote sessions, group coaching and an eight-week curriculum. Biography Most leadership burnout is not a wellness problem. It is a clarity problem. The leader knows what the next quarter requires, but cannot remember what the next decade is for. That is the gap Julia Gentry works in. She is the CEO and founder of The Dream Factory & Co., a coaching practice she built after a career in residential real estate that ended, by her own account, in burnout in her early thirties. Over the past decade, she has coached executive teams at growth-stage businesses in the $10 to $100 million revenue range, where the leadership group and the founders are usually the same small set of people. Her book Dream – I Dare You is the written form of that work. It argues that alignment across professional ambition, family life, and personal conviction is the precondition for sustained senior performance, not a soft add-on to it. The companion Dream – Workbook turns the same argument into a working tool for leadership teams and small groups. Her commercial track record is strongest in the US residential real estate sector, where firms including Harcourts North America, Total Real Estate Group and Keller Williams brokerages have brought her back to work with leaders and agents. The D.R.E.A.M. framework she developed is now used in keynote settings, in an eight-week curriculum, and in direct executive coaching with founders who have stopped enjoying the company they built. Key speaking topics Self-leadership and burnout recovery Women in senior leadership Purpose and alignment in growth-stage businesses Limiting beliefs in executive teams Leadership in real estate and entrepreneur-led firms Faith-aligned leadership Ideal for Founders and CEOs of growth-stage businesses in the $10 to $100 million revenue band Women leadership networks and senior women’s events Real estate brokerages, agent groups and franchise leadership conferences Faith-aligned corporate and entrepreneurial audiences Audience outcomes A clear read on where personal capacity is the bottleneck in the business, not the strategy Language for the gap between stated ambition and actual decision-making in the leadership team A practical structure, the D.R.E.A.M. framework, for resetting that gap Permission and a method for women leaders to redefine what success in the role looks like A direct challenge to grind-culture assumptions about what senior leadership requires

Why organisations work with Brickman Allen A specific, verifiable survival story: under 10% predicted chance of life, discharged nine days after the attack, marathon completed against medical advice. The narrative is his own, not borrowed. Author of The Bully Guard, a memoir and practical guide aimed at teenagers, which makes him a credible booking for schools, youth-facing programmes, and family-day corporate events as well as adult audiences. Runs his own businesses alongside the speaking work: president of EMC2 Group, an Arizona architecture firm, and owner of Tradelands Realty. The day job grounds the storytelling in operating reality rather than pure platform performance. Built around the #LiveOutside method, a personal framework on living outside expectations, limits, fear, and self. It gives audiences a single mental model to take away rather than a set of unconnected anecdotes. Biography highlights Survivor of a violent home invasion; defied a less than 10% survival prognosis and a predicted six-month hospital recovery, leaving hospital in nine days. Completed a marathon in early 2021 after medical opinion that he would never run again. Author of The Bully Guard: The Story of Acceptance and Friendship, available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. President of EMC2 Group, an Arizona architecture firm, with more than 15 years leading firms and teams in the US Southwest. Founder and owner of Tradelands Realty, established 2006. Member of the National Speakers Association, Arizona chapter. Biography A home invasion in his early twenties left Brickman Allen on life support with less than a 10% chance of survival and a predicted six-month hospital recovery. He walked out nine days later. Years on, he completed a marathon that doctors had said would never happen. That sequence is the spine of his speaking work. The point is not the survival itself, but what it reveals about decisions made under sustained pressure: how a person keeps showing up at home, at work, and inside an organisation while still healing. The #LiveOutside method, his own framework, organises this into four moves: living outside expectations, outside limits, outside fear, and outside self. He pairs the platform work with a working business life. He is president of EMC2 Group, an Arizona architecture firm where he has spent more than fifteen years leading teams across the US Southwest, and owner of Tradelands Realty, which he founded in 2006. His book The Bully Guard sits alongside the keynote work as a guide for teenagers on bullying, depression, and self-acceptance, drawn directly from his own school years. For audiences, the value is a model for recovery that does not skip the harder parts. He talks openly about depression, suicidal ideation as a teenager, and the long return to function after the attack. The result is a session that lands with people carrying something heavy of their own, alongside leaders who want a vocabulary for resilience that holds up outside the slide deck. Key speaking topics Recovery and resilience after trauma Mental health awareness and suicide prevention Bullying and adolescent self-acceptance Loyalty, integrity, and trust in teams Vulnerable leadership Storytelling for purpose-driven audiences Ideal for Internal culture days, all-hands events, and family-day formats where teams want a human story rather than a strategic keynote HR and wellbeing leads commissioning sessions on mental health awareness, resilience, or suicide prevention Schools, universities, and youth programmes addressing bullying and adolescent wellbeing Sales kick-offs and team off-sites looking for a closing keynote on perseverance and integrity Audience outcomes A single named framework, the #LiveOutside method, that audiences can hold onto after the room empties A first-person account of recovery from extreme adversity that opens space to discuss mental health honestly inside the organisation Language for talking about bullying, depression, and suicidal ideation in mixed audiences without flinching from the subject A practical view of how integrity, loyalty, and self-reliance show up in daily team behaviour

Why organisations work with Chrissy May She speaks to the personal interior of high performers, the part that wellness perks and engagement surveys do not reach, drawing on two decades of one-to-one work with founders, executives and athletes. Her practice integrates hypnotherapy, somatic work and subconscious reprogramming through Sacred Shift Therapy, so the material is grounded in a specific therapeutic method rather than general motivational content. Audiences hear from someone who has built and run businesses across health, wellness and real estate, not a speaker whose only product is the talk itself. Her book Aligned + Alive and the podcast of the same name give organisers a clear, public body of work that audiences can engage with before and after the session. Biography highlights Author, ALIGNED + ALIVE: Your Guide to Clarity, Self-Love, and Living with Purpose. Host, Aligned + Alive podcast, distributed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Founder, Sacred Shift Therapy and Sacred Experiences retreats. Founder of CMAY Performance, with work spanning elite athletes and survivors of domestic violence. Over 20 years in health and wellness; concurrent real-estate advisory practice based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Former competitive figure skater and fitness champion. Biography Performance at senior levels increasingly comes with a private cost that organisations do not see. Founders, executives and high-output professionals function publicly while quietly running low on clarity, energy and meaning. Chrissy May has spent more than twenty years working with that interior layer. Her practice, Sacred Shift Therapy, draws on transformational hypnotherapy, somatic work and subconscious reprogramming. The method is specific, not generalised motivation. Her retreat business, Sacred Experiences, applies the same approach to immersive group settings for leaders who need a reset rather than another training programme. She came to this work through performance environments. She competed as a figure skater and fitness champion before building CMAY Performance, which trained elite athletes and supported survivors of domestic violence. She has since combined the therapeutic practice with a long-running real-estate advisory career in Arizona, working in proximity to the entrepreneurial clients she also coaches. Her book Aligned + Alive: Your Guide to Clarity, Self-Love, and Living with Purpose and the podcast of the same name extend that practice to a wider audience. Both are built around the same thesis: that the people who appear most capable are often the ones most in need of permission to slow down, recover and choose what they actually want next. Key speaking topics Personal recovery from burnout Clarity and purpose for high achievers Mindset and subconscious reprogramming Inner work behind sustained performance Resilience after personal setback Authenticity and self-leadership Ideal for Founder and entrepreneur communities convening for offsites or retreats Sales, advisory and client-facing teams in high-output industries Women’s leadership and high-performer networks Personal-development and wellbeing programmes inside professional services and real estate Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where they are running on reserves and what is depleting them A specific therapeutic vocabulary for the difference between motivation, mindset and subconscious patterns Permission and language to slow down without losing professional ambition Practical exercises drawn from hypnotherapy and somatic work that they can use after the session

Why organisations work with Adam Thomas Two decades of broadcast presence on ITV and BBC primetime, including Emmerdale, Waterloo Road, I’m a Celebrity and Strictly Come Dancing, which translates directly into stage warmth in front of corporate audiences. A working founder’s perspective on consumer brand building, drawn from operating Oh My Glaze through retail at the Trafford Centre and surviving the public liquidation of a sister hospitality venture. Public, named experience of leading and performing while managing rheumatoid arthritis, a credible point of view for audiences interested in chronic illness and high-output careers. Comfort across awards hosting, panel moderation, fireside Q&A and after-dinner formats, with the broadcast pacing that those formats need. Biography highlights Played Adam Barton in ITV’s Emmerdale from 2009 to 2018, one of the longest single-character runs of his generation on the soap. Played Donte Charles in BBC’s Waterloo Road from 2006 to 2009, returning for the 2023 BBC reboot. Third-place finalist on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here in 2016, later co-host of the companion show I’m a Celebrity: Extra Camp. Strictly Come Dancing 2023 contestant, finishing in eighth place while publicly managing a recent rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis. Co-host of ITV’s 99 To Beat in 2025 with his brother Ryan Thomas. Founder of consumer hot sauce brand Oh My Glaze, with a flagship retail unit at the Trafford Centre in Manchester. Won Best Soap Newcomer at the 2010 TV Choice Awards. Biography Most consumer founders pitch their story after the win. Oh My Glaze sits in a less tidy place. The hot sauce brand is trading through a Trafford Centre flagship and grocery channels, while a sister hospitality business, the Manchester restaurant The Spinn, ended in voluntary liquidation. Running both at once, in public, is the substance of what Adam Thomas brings to a corporate stage on entrepreneurship. The platform underneath that is two decades of British primetime. Emmerdale carried him through almost a decade as Adam Barton from 2009. Waterloo Road framed his early career as Donte Charles and brought him back for the BBC reboot in 2023. I’m a Celebrity put him in front of a peak ITV audience and earned him a third-place finish in 2016, followed by co-hosting on Extra Camp. Strictly Come Dancing in 2023 added a live-broadcast performance credit while he was managing a recent diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, a condition he now discusses publicly on Good Morning Britain and This Morning. For corporate buyers, that record translates into a specific kind of stage product. He hosts awards, opens conferences, runs fireside panels and closes evenings. The broadcast training shows. Where the brief calls for it, he can speak to the founder track and to the experience of leading visible work through chronic illness. Key speaking topics Consumer brand building and founder operations Retail and hospitality entrepreneurship Television and broadcast careers Resilience while managing chronic illness Reality television and live performance Awards and event hosting Ideal for Corporate awards nights, gala dinners and team celebrations seeking a recognisable broadcast host Founder communities and SME audiences interested in consumer brand operations Retail, hospitality and FMCG events looking for a working-founder voice Workplace wellbeing audiences exploring chronic illness and high-output careers Audience outcomes A grounded view of what running a consumer hot sauce brand actually involves through retail and grocery stores An honest reading of what happened around the closure of The Spinn and what a founder takes from a public liquidation A first-person account of competing on Strictly Come Dancing with a recent rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis A warmer, looser room than a standard keynote slot, with broadcast-paced Q&A