Storytelling & Business Communication

Why organisations work with Ben Hines A signature programme, Know the Score, delivered with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and other professional ensembles, that puts senior leaders in the room with a world-class team operating in real time. Faculty appointments at Henley Business School and Korn Ferry International, anchoring the experiential work in a credible leadership development frame. Eighteen years in financial and legal services, including strategic marketing leadership at Barclays PLC, which keeps the corporate translation grounded rather than theatrical. A coaching credential (ACC, International Coach Federation) and a music degree from the University of York, sitting behind a method that other speakers cannot replicate. Biography highlights Founder of Moving Performance (2009), a leadership development firm using music and live musicians as the medium for senior team work. Creator of Know the Score, the first leadership programme to be developed in partnership with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Senior Associate faculty at Henley Business School, Korn Ferry International, and Altitude Leadership Partners. Associate Certified Coach, International Coach Federation. BA (Hons) Music, University of York. Earlier career as a strategic marketer at Barclays PLC and advisor to CPA Global. Biography A high-performing orchestra and a high-performing executive team face the same problem. Many specialists, one shared outcome, no rehearsal time. Most leadership development programmes describe that problem in abstract terms. Ben Hines puts it on a stage and lets leaders watch it solved in front of them. Moving Performance, the firm he founded in 2009, places professional musicians inside leadership sessions for serious organisations. The signature programme, Know the Score, runs in partnership with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and was the first leadership format developed with that orchestra. Senior teams observe how a group of experts coordinates without verbal instruction, then translate what they have seen into their own decision rhythms, listening habits, and roles under pressure. The credibility of the work rests on the corporate spine behind it. Eighteen years inside financial and legal services, including strategic marketing leadership at Barclays PLC across multiple international markets and an advisory role at CPA Global, sit underneath the musical method. Senior Associate faculty appointments at Henley Business School and Korn Ferry International, and an ACC coaching credential from the International Coach Federation, place the practice inside recognised leadership development infrastructure. Clients to date include Accenture, BP, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Borse, Jaguar Land Rover, PwC, Telekom Austria, Thames Water, and Wise. Key speaking topics High-performing teams Leadership and team development Change leadership Emotional intelligence in senior teams Communication and listening Executive presence Ideal for Chief Executives and executive committees running team off-sites and leadership conferences Heads of Leadership Development and CHROs commissioning senior team programmes Transformation leads using a leadership intervention to reset team behaviour during change Conference organisers needing a substantive keynote that doubles as a shared experience for the room Audience outcomes A common reference point for how an expert team coordinates without hierarchy interrupting the work Specific behavioural cues from professional musicians that translate into meeting and decision rhythms Sharper attention to listening, non-verbal signals, and timing in senior team interaction A shared experience the group keeps referring back to long after the session

Why organisations work with Jon Carmichael He brings a single, verifiable feat that anchors every claim he makes about creative ambition: the 2017 “108” photograph, captured aboard Southwest Airlines flight 1368 after the captain secured FAA approval to perform five 180-degree turns mid-flight. The story has been covered by Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Inc., which gives the keynote external validation few inspirational speakers can match. He has presented at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium and at TEDxManchester, two audiences with low tolerance for thin material, which signals he can hold a room of senior or technical attendees. His “Eclipse Mindset” gives sales conferences, innovation summits, and culture events a non-corporate frame for talking about ambition, alignment, and risk without sounding like internal-comms language. Biography highlights Astrophotographer; sixteen years documenting corporate and political events. Photographed the 2017 total solar eclipse from 39,000 feet aboard Southwest Airlines flight 1368, image titled “108”. Has spoken at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium and at TEDxManchester to an audience of around 2,500. Eclipse work featured by Good Morning America, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc., and Weather.com. Visual storytelling engagements with Twitter, Dell and ESPN; collectors of his fine art work include Sir Elton John. Unveiled the “108” image at a Twitter company event at the invitation of Jack Dorsey. Biography In August 2017, a commercial Southwest Airlines flight from Portland to St. Louis made five 180-degree turns at 39,000 feet so a single passenger in seat 1A could photograph a total solar eclipse over the Snake River. That passenger had spent two years mapping flight paths against the moon’s shadow, persuading an airline and a captain to accept the risk, and securing FAA approval the morning of the flight. The resulting image, titled “108”, is the spine of Jon Carmichael’s keynote work. Buyers do not commission him for technical photography. They commission him for what the project demonstrates about how teams attempt things that are not yet possible. The “Eclipse Mindset” he draws from the story is a practical frame, not a metaphor: identify the constraint, recruit unlikely partners, accept that the plan will change in execution, and prepare so that when conditions narrow to a two-minute window, the team can act. His credibility for serious audiences comes from where the work has been received. The image was covered by Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc. and Weather.com. He was invited to present at NASA’s Hubble Auditorium, with the talk broadcast to other NASA centres, and at TEDxManchester to roughly 2,500 attendees. Jack Dorsey invited him to unveil the photograph at a Twitter company event. For sales conferences, innovation kick-offs and culture moments where the brief is to lift the room without resorting to standard motivational fare, Carmichael offers a verifiable feat, a named project, and a usable frame, anchored by a story that audiences can recall and repeat months later. Key speaking topics The Eclipse Mindset Creativity and perspective shift Bold execution under constraint Visual storytelling Innovation through ambition Team alignment around a high-stakes vision Ideal for Sales conferences and annual kick-offs seeking a non-corporate opening or closing keynote Innovation, R&D, and product leadership offsites Culture, brand and marketing events CMOs and creative leadership audiences Audience outcomes A specific story they can quote, with named brands and dates, to anchor internal conversations about ambition A practical frame (“Eclipse Mindset”) for identifying which constraints are real and which are inherited Renewed appetite for projects that require unlikely partners and mid-execution adjustment A reminder that bold work is rarely solo: the eclipse image required an airline, a captain, a regulator, and years of preparation

Why organisations work with Pamela Barnum Field-tested credibility on trust and deception. Her techniques were developed making hundreds of undercover drug buys and prosecuting the resulting cases, not derived from lab studies. Two operating perspectives in one speaker: the covert practitioner who had to read a room to stay safe, and the federal prosecutor who had to read witnesses to win convictions. Practical decoding tools that transfer directly into negotiations, sales calls, performance conversations, and board meetings. Academic grounding that backs the stories: a Bachelor of Laws and Master of Public Administration from the University of Western Ontario, and graduate work in corporate negotiations. A point of view on trust as a measurable leadership behaviour, not a culture slogan, anchored in the TEDxCollingwood talk “What Drug Dealers Taught Me About Trust.” Biography highlights Twenty-year career in Canadian criminal justice across undercover policing and federal prosecution. Eight years deep undercover in the Drug Enforcement Section, with hundreds of buys at street and multi-six-figure level. Federal prosecuting attorney with the Federal Crown, specialising in drug trafficking cases. Bachelor of Laws and Master of Public Administration, University of Western Ontario. TEDxCollingwood speaker, “What Drug Dealers Taught Me About Trust,” hosted on TED.com. Keynote work for corporate, association, and law enforcement audiences across the United States, Canada, and Australia. Biography Trust is read in seconds, by people who often cannot articulate what they just saw. For most of Pamela Barnum’s first career, getting that read wrong carried physical risk. Eight years undercover in the Drug Enforcement Section meant building rapport with people whose business depended on detecting outsiders, then walking back into court rooms as a federal prosecutor and reading witnesses for credibility under cross-examination. That dual experience is the spine of her speaking work. She studied law at the University of Western Ontario while still serving as a full-time undercover officer, later adding a Master of Public Administration and graduate study in corporate negotiations. The result is a speaker who can connect a specific nonverbal cue to a specific commercial outcome, not just a story. Her keynote material translates field practice into decisions leaders actually make. How to enter a difficult negotiation without leaking intent. How to deliver a restructuring message that retains belief in the sender. How to spot the signals that a senior hire, supplier, or counterparty is hedging. The TEDxCollingwood talk “What Drug Dealers Taught Me About Trust” condensed the core argument into three working trust hacks now used widely across her corporate audiences. What makes her unusual on the leadership communication circuit is the source material. Trust as practised by undercover operators and prosecutors is observable, repeatable, and tied to consequence. That is what travels into a sales kickoff, an executive offsite, or a board preparation session, and that is what senior leaders take away. Key speaking topics Trust as a leadership behaviour Nonverbal communication and body language Deception detection in business contexts Negotiation under pressure Executive presence and credibility High-stakes communication Sales communication and influence Ideal for Sales leadership and revenue organisations preparing for high-value negotiations Executive development programmes focused on presence, credibility, and difficult conversations HR and culture leaders rebuilding trust after restructure or major change Associations, fraud and risk professionals, and law enforcement audiences Audience outcomes A working method for reading trust signals in real conversations, not in theory Specific nonverbal cues that indicate hedging, deception, or disengagement Sharper preparation for negotiations, performance conversations, and board interactions A clearer sense of how their own body language is being read by others Concrete techniques to project composure and authority under pressure

Why organisations work with Mark Franklin He names the specific barriers founders carry into their businesses: not being ready, not being good enough, not having enough time, and fear of failure. Audiences recognise themselves in the language and leave with a vocabulary for what was previously unspoken. His Four Fears framework is trademarked and structured, not improvised motivation. It gives small-business audiences a model they can apply to a stalled product launch, a pricing decision, or a hiring step. Paseda360 Advanced Practitioner credentials, including Havening and Transformational Coaching (ILM Assured), give the work a clinical grounding that ordinary business-mindset talks lack. He uses live drumming as a working metaphor for rhythm, action and recovery in business, which makes the session memorable for audiences who have sat through standard keynotes. Recognition as Highly Commended Rising Star and Finalist for Emerging Coach of the Year at the National Coaching Awards 2025 marks him as a credible voice within the UK coaching profession. Biography highlights Founder of The Four Fears, a trademarked mindset coaching framework for small business owners and creative professionals. Paseda360 Advanced Practitioner, Level One Havening Coach, Level One Limitless Light Practitioner, and Practitioner in Transformational Coaching (ILM Assured). National Coaching Awards 2025: Highly Commended, Rising Star; Finalist, Emerging Coach of the Year. Former Managing Director of Usborne Books at Home, previously Marketing Director. Speaker, coach and emcee, with podcast appearances including The Next 100 Days (Ep. 408) and LiveTrue (Ep. 011). Author of a forthcoming book on the Four Fears of business ownership. Biography Most small businesses do not fail because the market turned. They fail because the owner stopped acting on the things that mattered. Procrastination, perfectionism, imposter feelings and fear of failure are the everyday barriers that quietly drain founders, and they are rarely addressed by ordinary business advice. The Four Fears, Franklin’s trademarked framework, names these four barriers and gives owners a shared language for what is happening inside their own decision-making. The work is built on Paseda360 Advanced Practitioner training, including Havening and Transformational Coaching (ILM Assured), which roots the approach in neuroscience-informed coaching practice rather than generic motivation. His credibility is anchored in two careers. He led Usborne Books at Home as Managing Director after several years as its Marketing Director, which gives him an operator’s read on what running a small enterprise actually feels like. He moved into full-time coaching and speaking and was recognised in 2025 with two National Coaching Awards shortlistings, Highly Commended Rising Star and Finalist for Emerging Coach of the Year. On stage, Franklin works with a drum kit as part of the talk. The drumming is not theatrics; it stands in for rhythm, deliberate action and recovery, the same patterns he asks owners to recognise in their businesses. Audiences leave with a framework, a vocabulary, and an unusually concrete sense of what bravery looks like when applied to a real commercial decision. Key speaking topics Small business mindset and the Four Fears Entrepreneurial procrastination and perfectionism Imposter feelings in founders and creative professionals Action and rhythm in business decision-making Bravery and clarity in self-employment Coaching-led personal development for owner-operators Ideal for Small-business and entrepreneur audiences at conferences, association events and network gatherings Creative professionals, freelancers and independent operators looking for honest mindset content Franchise networks, direct-sales organisations and SME communities running annual or regional events After-dinner and emcee briefs where a speaker also needs to host or moderate the room Audience outcomes A named vocabulary for the four psychological barriers that most often stall small-business owners A practical sense of how to spot which of the four fears is currently in play, in themselves and in colleagues A grounded view of bravery as a working practice in business, not a personality trait Energy and a memorable creative device, the drum kit, that anchors the message after the room empties

Why organisations work with John Bercow He held the Speaker’s Chair through Brexit and the most contested parliamentary period since the Second World War, and can explain why specific rulings landed the way they did. He worked alongside four prime ministers, from Blair-era Labour through Cameron, May, and Johnson, and reads cross-party Westminster dynamics with insider fluency. He authored The Bercow Report on speech, language and communication needs, a government-commissioned review that produced 40 recommendations and triggered £52 million in committed funding, evidence of policy weight beyond the Speaker’s role. He is Professor of Politics at Royal Holloway and a Fellow at Birkbeck, which gives the analysis academic discipline rather than memoir colour. He brings a confident platform voice, willing to take questions head-on, suited to senior internal audiences who want sharp answers, not diplomatic fog. Biography highlights 157th Speaker of the House of Commons, 2009 to 2019, longest-serving Speaker since Edward FitzRoy. Member of Parliament for Buckingham, 1997 to 2019, elected Speaker at the opening of three consecutive Parliaments. Author of Unspeakable: The Autobiography (Sunday Times bestseller) and Tennis Maestros (Biteback Publishing). Author of The Bercow Report on speech, language and communication needs, commissioned by the UK government. Professor of Politics, Royal Holloway, University of London; Fellow, Birkbeck, University of London. Chaired UK Youth Parliament sittings in the Commons Chamber for a decade. Biography The Speaker’s Chair in the House of Commons is one of the most exposed seats in British public life. Between 2009 and 2019, John Bercow occupied it through the financial crisis aftermath, the coalition years, the EU referendum, and the parliamentary deadlock that followed. He served alongside four prime ministers and was elected Speaker at the start of three consecutive Parliaments, a post-war first. His Brexit-era rulings reshaped the relationship between Parliament and government. In March 2019 he invoked a 1604 convention to block a third vote on the same Withdrawal Agreement, ruling the motion could not return unchanged. That September he called the proposed prorogation of Parliament a “constitutional outrage”. Constitutional scholars at Queen Mary and the Constitution Unit have since framed this period as the most significant power shift between executive and legislature since 1642. Before the Chair, Bercow was the MP for Buckingham from 1997. In 2008 he produced The Bercow Report for the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department of Health, a 40-recommendation review of speech, language and communication services that prompted £52 million in committed funding and a National Year of Communication. He chaired UK Youth Parliament sittings in the Commons Chamber annually throughout his Speakership. He is now Professor of Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, and a Fellow of Birkbeck, University of London. His memoir Unspeakable was a Sunday Times bestseller; Tennis Maestros, drawing on a parallel career as a coach and competitive junior, was published by Biteback. Key speaking topics UK parliamentary process and constitutional convention Westminster political risk and policy direction Brexit and its institutional aftermath The Speaker’s role and parliamentary scrutiny Public policy reform and legislative accountability Leadership and decision-making in contested arenas Ideal for Boards and executive teams with material UK regulatory or policy exposure General counsel, public affairs, and government relations leadership Financial services, professional services, and infrastructure sector leadership tracking Westminster Conferences on governance, democracy, and institutional change Audience outcomes A clearer read of how parliamentary procedure shapes UK policy outcomes that hit corporate plans. A first-hand account of the Brexit rulings and what they revealed about institutional power in Britain. Insight into how four prime ministers handled the Commons differently, and what that says about political leadership under pressure. Sharper questions to ask of in-house political risk and public affairs functions. A perspective on managing dissent, conflict, and high-stakes decisions in formal institutional settings.

Why organisations work with Makaziwe Mandela She holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst alongside two decades of South African corporate experience, which lets her speak to inclusion as an organisational practice, not a slogan. As co-founder and Chairperson of House of Mandela, she has run a company through the actual mechanics of building a brand, hiring, partnership disputes and international expansion, so the leadership content is grounded in operating reality. She offers boards a defensible language for values-led decisions at a moment when DEI commitments are being challenged in public, drawing on a family history that gives her standing to say things others cannot. She has held senior roles at Spoornet, the Development Bank of Southern Africa and Nestle South Africa, which means she can address inclusion from inside the constraints of a real P&L rather than from a consultancy frame. Her 2023 Rizzoli book Mandela: In Honor of an Extraordinary Life gives her a current platform that pulls executive audiences into a conversation about leadership character, not just legacy. Biography highlights PhD in Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1993, with prior degrees from the University of Fort Hare and the University of Natal. Chairperson and co-founder of House of Mandela, launched in 2010 with her daughter Tukwini Mandela. Author of Mandela: In Honor of an Extraordinary Life, Rizzoli, 2023, with a foreword by Reverend Al Sharpton. Former Executive Manager of Corporate Services at the Development Bank of Southern Africa and former General Manager of Human Resources at Spoornet. Board service has included Nestle South Africa, Rand Water Services and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Director of the House of Mandela Family Foundation, established 2017. Recipient of the La Moda Veste la Pace Award, presented in Rome in 2022 for sustained public commitment to her father’s principles of liberty, respect and the fight against discrimination. Biography Inclusion programmes are being cut, defended, rebranded and quietly abandoned across global businesses. The leaders making those calls need someone who can talk about service and inclusion without flinching from the commercial reality, and without flattening the argument into either compliance language or family memoir. Makaziwe Mandela trained as an anthropologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she completed her doctorate in 1993, after earlier degrees from the University of Fort Hare and the University of Natal. That training shapes how she works with executive audiences. She treats organisations as cultures with their own incentives, hierarchies and stories, and she pushes leaders to ask what their decisions actually signal to the people inside them. The corporate record sits behind the academic one. She has held senior posts at Spoornet, the Development Bank of Southern Africa and Nestle South Africa, and has served on boards including Rand Water Services and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. In 2010 she co-founded House of Mandela with her daughter Tukwini, building a wine label and broader heritage business that now operates internationally. The 2017 House of Mandela Family Foundation extends that work into education and economic empowerment. Her 2023 Rizzoli book, Mandela: In Honor of an Extraordinary Life, places her current platform on her own terms. The book draws on family letters, photographs and her father’s later artwork, and it forms the backdrop for the leadership conversation she now takes into boardrooms: what humility looks like as an operating habit, why service is a strategic question, and how senior leaders defend inclusive choices when the political weather turns against them. Key speaking topics Servant and values-based leadership Inclusion as an organisational discipline Female economic empowerment in emerging markets Building a family business with a public legacy Social justice and reconciliation in business Africa’s role in the global economy Allyship and difference at work Ideal for Boards and executive committees reframing DEI commitments under public and investor pressure CHROs and culture leads designing inclusion work that has to survive a budget cycle Leadership development programmes for senior cohorts in multinational organisations Conferences and offsites focused on values-led leadership, purpose and reconciliation Audience outcomes A clearer language for defending inclusive decisions to investors, employees and external critics. A working definition of servant leadership that ties to specific operating choices, not abstract values. A grounded view of how African businesses build durable brands across generations. Concrete reflections on humility, character and consistency as senior leadership habits. A renewed appetite for the human side of strategy, anchored in named examples from her own corporate and entrepreneurial career.

Why organisations work with Nicole Bearne A continuous twenty-five-year vantage point inside one Formula One team, from founding member of British American Racing in 1998 to Head of Internal Communications at Mercedes-AMG Petronas through its run of consecutive Constructors’ Championships. Few practitioners in this field have anywhere near that depth of single-environment experience. Reported directly to Team Principal Ross Brawn between 2007 and 2013, including the 2009 Brawn GP season that delivered both world titles in the team’s first and only year of existence and is the subject of the 2023 Disney+ documentary Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story. Built and led the Internal Communications function at Mercedes-AMG Petronas from scratch within a 1,300-person engineering organisation operating across multiple UK sites and racing every fortnight. MSc in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck, University of London, and a CIPR Diploma in Internal Communications. Few practitioners with comparable F1 operational experience hold formal qualifications in organisational psychology. Independent Non-Executive Director at Motorsport UK and Chair of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee, adding a board-level governance perspective to the operational track record. Biography highlights Head of Internal Communications, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, for approximately a decade through a sustained period of world championship success. Executive Assistant to Team Principal Ross Brawn (2007 to 2013), covering Honda Racing F1, the 2009 Brawn GP championship year, and the Mercedes acquisition. Founding member of British American Racing Formula One Team in 1998. Independent Non-Executive Director at Motorsport UK and Chair of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee. MSc in Organisational Behaviour, Birkbeck, University of London; CIPR Diploma in Internal Communications; Member of CIPR (MCIPR); Accredited PR Practitioner. Founder and Director of The Comms Exchange Ltd; featured in the 2023 Disney+ documentary Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story. Biography Inside Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, internal communications is treated as a performance variable. The function exists to make sure that 1,300 people across multiple sites act on the same strategy at the same time, every race weekend. That is the environment Nicole Bearne worked inside for 25 years. She was a founding member of British American Racing in 1998 and stayed through the team’s transitions to Honda Racing F1, Brawn GP and Mercedes-AMG Petronas. Between 2007 and 2013 she was Executive Assistant to Team Principal Ross Brawn. That tenure included the 2009 season when Brawn GP took both world titles in its first and only year of existence. She then built the Internal Communications function at Mercedes-AMG Petronas from scratch and led it for the next decade. She operated at board level through a period in which the team won eight consecutive Constructors’ Championships. Her academic grounding sits alongside that operational experience: an MSc in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck and the CIPR Diploma in Internal Communications. Today she runs The Comms Exchange, advising organisations on internal communications and engagement in complex environments. She also serves as Independent Non-Executive Director at Motorsport UK and chairs its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee. The Brawn GP season she lived through is the subject of the 2023 Disney+ documentary Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story. Key speaking topics Internal communications in high-performance organisations Employee engagement and employee experience Leadership communication at scale Culture inside elite sport Diversity, equity and inclusion governance Lessons from Formula One for complex organisations Ideal for Internal communications, corporate affairs and employee experience leaders Chief People Officers, HR directors and heads of culture Senior leadership teams in large or multi-site organisations operating under sustained competitive pressure Boards and committees responsible for inclusion, engagement and organisational culture Audience outcomes A view of internal communications as an operating discipline, drawn from a decade running the function at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team. How a 1,300-person F1 team translates strategy into execution under non-negotiable race deadlines. What four ownership transitions of one F1 team reveal about leading communications through structural change. The link between employee experience and on-track performance, with named examples from Brawn GP and Mercedes’ championship years.

Why organisations work with Jade Simmons A mainstage moment that combines a Steinway, live performance and a structured keynote, rather than a podium talk. Few speakers can carry that format credibly at scale. A classical performance pedigree that holds up under scrutiny: Sphinx Medal of Excellence, performances at the White House and the US Supreme Court, repertoire from Rachmaninoff to contemporary crossover work. Author of an Amazon bestseller, Audacious Prayers for World Changers, and host of American Public Media’s Decomposed, a podcast named to best-of lists by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. A track record headlining for Dell, NBCUniversal, Raytheon, Pfizer, Intuit QuickBooks, Nationwide, Hershey’s and Royal Bank of Canada at sales kick-offs, leadership summits and culture events. Biography highlights Recipient of the Sphinx Organization’s Medal of Excellence, with the ceremony hosted at the US Supreme Court by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Concert performances at the White House, Ravinia, Chicago Sinfonietta at Symphony Hall, New York’s Town Hall and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Host of Decomposed on American Public Media, recognised by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. Author of Audacious Prayers for World Changers (Amazon bestseller, English and Spanish editions) and Purpose the Remix. CEO and founder of Jade Media Global; ran as an independent candidate for US President in 2020. Northwestern University undergraduate; Master’s as a Provost Fellow at Rice University; first runner-up at Miss America 2000. Biography Corporate audiences sit through more keynotes in a year than most of them care to count. The hardest brief a programme committee inherits is the opening or closing slot at a large convening, where the room needs to lift, not settle. A piano on stage and a performer who can also hold a leadership argument is one of the few formats that reliably moves a thousand people from neutral attention to engagement. Simmons built that format from the classical concert hall. She holds the Sphinx Organization’s Medal of Excellence, awarded in a ceremony at the US Supreme Court hosted by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Her concert resume includes the White House, Ravinia, the Chicago Sinfonietta at Symphony Hall and New York’s Town Hall. She trained at Northwestern and Rice, where she held a Provost Fellowship. The keynote work extends the performance into a structured message about purpose, reinvention and what she calls “Maverick Behavior.” She has headlined for Dell, NBCUniversal, Raytheon, Pfizer, Intuit QuickBooks, Nationwide, Hershey’s and Royal Bank of Canada. Her book Audacious Prayers for World Changers is an Amazon bestseller in English and Spanish, and her American Public Media podcast Decomposed has been named to best-of lists by Time, Esquire, BBC America and IndieWire. She also runs Jade Media Global, the company that produces her live experiences and content. Buyers commission her when the brief is to make a single moment in a long agenda the one people remember. Key speaking topics Purpose and reinvention Leadership and self-leadership Creativity and personal innovation Performance and mainstage entertainment Diversity and inclusion as a culture lever Personal branding and creative identity Resilience and breakthrough Ideal for CEO town halls, sales kick-offs and annual leadership conferences that need a mainstage opener or closer Chief People Officers and culture leads programming purpose, inclusion or engagement events Awards nights, customer summits and recognition events where the room needs to feel something specific Industries booking marquee music-led keynotes (financial services, pharma, tech, professional services) Audience outcomes A shared mainstage moment the room references for the rest of the agenda A direct, personal message on purpose, reinvention and creative courage A live concert performance that sits inside, not alongside, the keynote argument Practical language for leaders to talk about reinvention with their own teams

Why organisations work with Julien Simon-Chautemps He has run live, multi-million-pound decisions across 265 Grands Prix, where the cost of a wrong call is measured in tenths of a second and broadcast to a global audience. Few speakers operate from that altitude of pressure. He explains the F1 pit wall as a working management system: how information flows from car to engineer to strategist to driver, what gets filtered, and how the team avoids the two failure modes of analysis paralysis and over-reaction. He sat next to one of the most demanding drivers in modern F1 history, Kimi Raikkonen, and can describe in concrete terms how to communicate with high-performers who do not want managing, only useful input. He is still active in the sport as a Canal+ and F1 TV technical analyst, which keeps the case material current rather than nostalgic. The session does not rely on the 2007 Toyota years to make its point. He brings the engineer’s view, not the driver’s. Audiences get the side of the cockpit where the strategy, the data, and the team coordination actually happen. Biography highlights 14 seasons as a Formula 1 race engineer across Toyota, Lotus/Caterham, Renault/Lotus Renault, and Sauber/Alfa Romeo 265 Grands Prix attended trackside between 2007 and 2022 Race engineer to Kimi Raikkonen at Alfa Romeo through his final F1 seasons; previously worked with him at Lotus Engineered drivers including Jarno Trulli, Romain Grosjean, Pastor Maldonado, Vitaly Petrov, Jolyon Palmer, and Marcus Ericsson Founder of JSC7 Engineering Ltd (2022), providing motorsport consultancy, race strategy, and data analysis services Technical analyst for Canal+ and on-air pundit for F1 TV; aerospace engineering graduate of IPSA Paris (2002) Biography The pit wall in Formula 1 is one of the most concentrated decision environments in any industry. Tyre choices, fuel loads, safety-car responses, and pit-stop calls all happen on a clock that does not negotiate. Julien Simon-Chautemps spent fourteen seasons running that environment as a race engineer, including the final F1 chapter of Kimi Raikkonen’s career at Alfa Romeo. His route into the cockpit conversation was technical, not glamorous. He trained as an aerospace and aeronautical engineer at IPSA in Paris, then ran junior single-seater programmes at Prema Powerteam and Trident before stepping onto the F1 grid with Toyota in 2007. By the time he retired from trackside duties in 2022, he had attended 265 Grands Prix across Toyota, Lotus, Caterham, Renault, Sauber, and Alfa Romeo. The drivers he worked with were not interchangeable personalities. Jarno Trulli, Romain Grosjean, Vitaly Petrov, Pastor Maldonado, Jolyon Palmer, Marcus Ericsson, and Raikkonen each demanded a different style of communication. That range is what gives his sessions their texture: he is talking about how to lead and inform high-performers who will not tolerate noise, not how to motivate average teams. Today he runs JSC7 Engineering Ltd, a motorsport and automotive consultancy he founded in 2022, and contributes technical analysis to Canal+ and F1 TV. The keynote work draws on the same source material the consultancy does. Senior teams hear how an F1 garage actually coordinates, where the failure points sit, and what leaders in regulated, high-stakes industries can take from a sport built around the discipline of tenths. Key speaking topics Decision-making under time pressure High-performance team coordination Real-time communication between technical and executive functions Leadership of elite individual performers Operating rhythms in high-stakes, regulated environments Data, instinct, and the limits of each in live decisions Resilience and recovery in competitive cycles Ideal for COOs, transformation leads, and operational executives running time-critical functions Senior leadership teams in regulated or safety-critical industries (aviation, energy, financial markets, healthcare) Engineering and technology leaders building decision systems around live data Sales, trading, and front-line teams whose performance depends on second-by-second judgement Audience outcomes A working picture of how an F1 team turns live data into a single coordinated decision, with named examples from the pit wall Sharper language for the difference between a fast decision and a rushed one A feel for how high-performers actually want to be communicated with under pressure, drawn from years alongside Raikkonen and Grosjean Specific habits leaders can install before high-pressure moments rather than improvise during them A closer view of the sport itself: what the audience hears on the radio is the surface of a much larger system

Why organisations work with Andrea McLean Thirteen years anchoring Loose Women gives her a craft of audience handling that few corporate keynote speakers can match, useful for events that need a host who can hold a room as well as deliver content. She speaks publicly about her own surgical menopause, breakdown and career exit, which lets internal audiences raise menopause and midlife anxiety as workplace issues without the conversation feeling clinical or performative. As co-founder and CEO of This Girl Is On Fire, she brings the perspective of someone who has built a women’s personal growth business from scratch, not just a presenter reading a script on the topic. Confessions of a Menopausal Woman and This Girl Is on Fire gave her a defined, recognisable position in the UK menopause and midlife conversation, useful for employer events targeting women in their forties and fifties. She can move between keynote, panel chair, awards host and after-dinner storyteller in the same engagement, which suits women’s networks, internal D&I events and customer-facing brand evenings. Biography highlights Longest-serving anchor of ITV’s Loose Women, on the panel from 2007 to 2020. Began her television career as a GMTV weather presenter in 1997, building a 24-year run across UK daytime broadcasting. Author of four books published with Hodder & Stoughton and others, including Confessions of a Menopausal Woman (2018) and the Sunday Times bestseller This Girl Is on Fire (2020). Co-founder and CEO of This Girl Is On Fire, a women’s personal growth platform launched in 2018 with masterclasses, podcast, app and live events. Has interviewed Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, Drew Barrymore and Michael Bublé across her broadcasting career. Runs a CPD-accredited media coaching course used by founders, authors and executives preparing for high-stakes broadcast appearances. Biography Most organisations still treat menopause, anxiety and midlife reinvention as private events that happen to women alongside their work, rather than as workplace issues. The result is a steady, quiet loss of senior women at exactly the point they should be moving into their most influential roles. Andrea McLean has spent the past decade turning that private territory into public conversation. For thirteen years she anchored ITV’s Loose Women, the longest-serving lead on a panel show built around women talking honestly about their lives. The role gave her a particular kind of authority: the craft of holding a room of strangers, and the experience of doing it while navigating a surgical menopause, anxiety, two divorces and, in 2019, a public breakdown that became the trigger for leaving television. In 2018 she co-founded This Girl Is On Fire with her husband Nick Feeney, a personal growth platform for women that now runs masterclasses, a podcast, an app and live events. Confessions of a Menopausal Woman and This Girl Is on Fire established her as a recognisable UK voice on midlife women’s health and reinvention, with the second book reaching the Sunday Times bestseller list. She is most useful to organisations that need someone who can host an event, deliver a keynote and answer questions about midlife transition without flinching. The audience is usually a women’s network, a D&I forum, or a customer event aimed at women in their forties and fifties. The substance is personal, the room is her craft, and the topic is one she has built a company around. Key speaking topics Menopause in the workplace Midlife reinvention for senior women Anxiety and personal recovery Women’s networks and inclusion events Storytelling for high-stakes communication Confidence and career pivots Building a business in midlife Ideal for Women’s networks and ERGs at large employers D&I and wellbeing events focused on women aged 40 to 55 Customer-facing brand evenings and awards nights needing a host with on-air craft Internal leadership events seeking a candid voice on midlife transition and resilience Audience outcomes A frank, named account of menopause, anxiety and recovery delivered without clinical distance. Permission for senior women in the room to raise midlife and health issues as workplace topics. A story of leaving a high-profile career and building a business in midlife, useful for audiences considering their own pivot. A room held with the pace and warmth of a broadcaster, not the rhythm of a corporate presenter.

Why organisations work with Tony Martignetti He gives senior leaders a working method for staying composed under chaos, the 6Cs of Grounded Leadership, drawn from coaching thousands of executives through transition and reinvention. His work draws on a finance and strategy career inside life sciences, so the conversation with a CEO or CFO is operator-to-operator, not coach-to-client. He has built one of the most listened-to long-form leadership interview shows, The Virtual Campfire, and brings 200+ executive conversations into his keynotes as material rather than anecdote. He is published by Routledge on the use of personal narrative in leadership, with a third book on integrated, multidimensional leadership due in 2026, a depth of authorship rare in the resilience and purpose category. He is equally credible with a founder team mid-scale-up and a Fortune 500 leadership group mid-restructure, because the underlying problem, leading from grounded clarity, is the same. Biography highlights Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer, Inspired Purpose Partners, after a finance and strategy career across high-tech and life sciences. TEDx speaker whose talk “Don’t Check Yourself at the Door” has passed two million views. Author of “Climbing the Right Mountain” (2021) and “Campfire Lessons for Leaders” (Routledge, 2024), with “Illuminating Hidden Brilliance” forthcoming in 2026. Host of The Virtual Campfire podcast, 200+ episodes of long-form leadership interviews. ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC); MBA, D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University. Writes a regular leadership column for Inc., and has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes, CEOWORLD, and Life Science Leader; named a Top Voice in Leadership by Thinkers360. Biography Composure is now part of the senior leader’s job description. Decisions are sharper, cycles are shorter, and the people in the room read the leader for steadiness before they read the strategy. That is the territory Tony Martignetti works in. He came to it through operations, not theory. Before founding Inspired Purpose Partners, he spent a finance and strategy career across high-tech and life sciences companies, ran a financial consulting practice, and worked alongside founders and boards through capital events and reinvention. The coaching is shaped by that operator’s instinct for what actually moves a decision under pressure. His work runs on two linked ideas. The 6Cs of Grounded Leadership give senior leaders a frame for composure under sustained pressure. Multidimensional leadership, his own term, names a pattern he sees often: capable people fragment themselves to perform, and their sharpest thinking goes dormant. He developed both across two books, including “Campfire Lessons for Leaders,” published by Routledge in 2024, and more than 200 long-form interviews on his podcast, The Virtual Campfire. The audience is the senior leader who has the credentials, the team, and the strategy, and still needs a steadier internal frame to lead from. What they recognise is the substance: a clear, usable practice for leading well when conditions will not settle. That practice has travelled. He writes a regular leadership column for Inc., and his work appears in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Forbes. Thinkers360 names him among its Top Voices in Leadership, and his TEDx talk “Don’t Check Yourself at the Door” has passed two million views. Key speaking topics Grounded leadership under chaos Composure and decision-making for senior leaders Multidimensional leadership Purpose and direction for executives in transition Personal narrative as a leadership instrument Reinvention for founders and senior teams Coaching culture inside leadership teams Ideal for C-suite teams working through reorganisation, integration, or strategic reset Founder and scale-up CEOs entering a new operating phase Senior leadership programmes inside life sciences, technology, and professional services Executive offsites where the brief is composure, clarity, and direction Audience outcomes A working method, the 6Cs of Grounded Leadership, that a senior leader can apply on Monday morning Sharper criteria for which decisions deserve the leader’s attention and which do not A clearer read on the leader’s own ambition, and whether the current mountain is the right one Practical use of personal story as a tool for trust, alignment, and team direction Language for steadiness that travels across the leadership team, not just the individual

Why organisations work with Stef Sword-Williams She gives quiet, high-performing employees a working method for being seen, which directly affects retention and promotion equity rather than abstract confidence. Her material is built from eight years inside advertising, so self-promotion is taught as a brand and storytelling discipline, not a motivational frame. F*ck Being Humble has trained workforces at Apple, Google, Unilever, Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, the BBC, NatWest, L’Oreal, Aviva, and Amazon, giving her a wide read on where internal visibility fails. The book F*ck Being Humble: Why Self-Promotion Isn’t a Dirty Word has sold over 10,000 copies and gives her a defined point of view that audiences can follow into workshops and team practice. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, useful as signal for senior buyers screening a younger speaker against a leadership-level audience. Biography highlights Founder of F*ck Being Humble, a global training consultancy working with Apple, Google, Unilever, Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, the BBC, NatWest, L’Oreal, Aviva, and Amazon. Author of F*ck Being Humble: Why Self-Promotion Isn’t a Dirty Word, published by Quadrille and reported to have sold over 10,000 copies. TEDx speaker, with a talk titled “F*ck being humble!” delivered at TEDxAreni. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe honouree. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), recognising the social impact of her work. Featured in Vogue, BBC World News, the Financial Times, and The Times, and a regular speaker at industry events including Advertising Week. Biography The people who get promoted are not always the people doing the best work. Inside large organisations, visibility shapes who progresses and who plateaus, and most employees have never been taught how to make their contribution legible to the people deciding their next role. Stef Sword-Williams spent close to eight years in advertising telling stories for global brands before noticing how rarely the same craft was applied to individual careers. She founded F*ck Being Humble in 2018 to close that gap, and in 2020 published the book of the same name with Quadrille, setting out a method for self-promotion that treats it as professional skill rather than personality trait. The work has scaled into a training practice used by Apple, Google, Unilever, Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, the BBC, NatWest, L’Oreal, Aviva, and Amazon. She has been recognised as a Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe honouree and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, with media coverage across Vogue, BBC World News, the Financial Times, and The Times. Her TEDxAreni talk, “F*ck being humble!”, is the short form of the same argument. Organisations that want to keep their best people, close promotion gaps, and grow a stronger internal pipeline cannot rely on quiet competence to surface itself. Sword-Williams gives them a vocabulary and a practice for fixing that. Key speaking topics Self-promotion as a workplace skill Personal branding inside organisations Imposter syndrome and confidence at work Pitching, presenting, and making ideas heard Negotiation and asking for more Networking and internal visibility Feedback culture Storytelling for individuals in a brand-driven world Ideal for CHROs, CPOs, and L&D leaders working on retention, promotion equity, and internal mobility. DEI and ERG leads designing programming for women, early-career talent, and underrepresented groups in promotion pipelines. Heads of Talent and managers running high-potential and emerging-leader cohorts. Conference programmers building tracks on workplace confidence, personal brand, or future skills. Audience outcomes A practical method for talking about their own work without sounding self-serving or scripted. A clear view of where internal visibility breaks down and which behaviours close that gap. Language for handling feedback, negotiation, and self-advocacy conversations with managers. Permission and pattern for ambitious self-presentation in cultures that default to humility. Tools managers can use to surface quieter talent and rebalance who gets seen.