Storytelling & Business Communication

Why organisations work with Ana Andjelic Her “aspirational economy” thesis that brand value is now built through social, cultural, and environmental capital rather than product features or advertising reach gives leadership teams a conceptually rigorous basis for repositioning brands in fragmented consumer markets, not just a set of tactics. She has delivered verified results at scale: the Banana Republic rebrand under her leadership produced a 27% year-on-year comparable sales increase, which means boards are not being asked to take a theory on faith. Her two Routledge-published books, combined with The Sociology of Business newsletter (ranked among Substack’s top 15 business publications), mean her framework is publicly available, continuously tested, and already in use by the marketing leaders her audiences need to influence. She brings C-suite brand experience across three distinct commercial contexts – global mass retail (Banana Republic, Esprit), contemporary luxury (Mansur Gavriel), and independent fashion (Rebecca Minkoff), making her diagnostic toolkit applicable beyond any single category or brand tier. A Columbia sociology doctorate and a senior career at agencies including Droga5 and Havas means she can diagnose what has broken in a brand’s relationship with culture and explain why, not just describe the symptoms. Biography highlights Chief Brand Officer at Banana Republic, rebrand delivered a 27% year-on-year comparable sales increase Former Global Chief Brand Officer at Esprit, led brand repositioning across Europe and market re-entry in North America and Asia-Pacific Author of two books published by Routledge: The Business of Aspiration and Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture Recognised three times by Forbes for CMO work, including Forbes CMO Next Publishes The Sociology of Business, ranked among the top 15 business publications on Substack Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, Fast Company, The Guardian, Adweek, and Vogue PhD in Sociology and MA in Media Studies; senior agency experience at Droga5, Havas Media, and Spring Studios Biography Ana Andjelic spent two decades in C-suite brand roles, at Banana Republic, Esprit, Mansur Gavriel, and Rebecca Minkoff, while simultaneously building a body of intellectual work that explains why most brand strategy fails. The result is a perspective with unusual commercial credibility: she has made the argument at board level and then delivered the numbers. Her central thesis, developed in The Business of Aspiration (Routledge), is that modern consumers no longer signal status through wealth or possessions but through taste, curation, and values – what she calls social, cultural, and environmental capital. The organisations that understand this are not running better advertising. They are restructuring brand strategy around cultural influence: collaborations, creative communities, content, and what she identifies in her second book, Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture, as the systematic production of cultural hits. At Banana Republic, she translated this framework into a full brand repositioning that delivered a 27% year-on-year comparable sales increase. At Esprit, she oversaw the brand’s repositioning across Europe and its re-entry into North American and Asia-Pacific markets. Both assignments required her to make cultural arguments in commercial terms and to redesign the marketing function to deliver them. Andjelic holds a PhD in Sociology from Columbia University and a Masters in Media Studies. Her Sociology of Business newsletter is among Substack’s top 15 business publications. She contributes to Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, Fast Company, and Vogue, and is a frequent expert source for the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Key speaking topics Brand strategy and repositioning Cultural influence and the aspirational economy Consumer aspiration and shifting status symbols Cultural hitmaking as commercial strategy The Creative Class and cultural audience segmentation Brand storytelling and narrative architecture Retail innovation and brand-driven growth Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Brand Officers leading brand repositioning or category entry C-suite leaders in fashion, luxury, and retail responsible for connecting brand investment to commercial outcomes Strategy and brand teams in consumer-facing businesses seeking a model for cultural relevance that scales Boards and leadership teams reviewing brand value architecture, growth planning, or market re-entry Audience outcomes A working framework for understanding how social, cultural, and environmental capital now drive brand value and purchase decisions, and what that means for brand investment A practical model for redefining brand strategy as cultural influence, with organisational and operational implications Clarity on the role of cultural products, collaborations, content, entertainment, community, in building sustainable brand growth beyond advertising A method for segmenting audiences by their relationship to culture, including how the Creative Class functions as an amplification layer Tested examples of how cultural strategy translates into commercial results, including the conditions that made the Banana Republic repositioning work

Why organisations work with Jason Bradbury Twelve years presenting The Gadget Show on Channel 5 trained him to make emerging technology legible to a general audience without diluting the substance. Boards get the same treatment. His 2026 keynote The AI Advantage introduces a “6 Degrees of AI” framework that maps AI impact across sectors, giving audiences a structured way to read their own industry rather than a generic overview. He completed MIT’s Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy programme, anchoring the keynote content in a formal commercial-AI curriculum rather than vendor marketing. He combines keynote and host roles in the same booking. For technology summits and innovation days that need a credible anchor across the whole programme, this removes a casting decision. Biography highlights Presented Channel 5’s The Gadget Show from launch in 2004 to 2016, twelve years of prime-time technology broadcasting. Multiple Guinness World Records set on the programme, including fastest jet-powered street luge at 186.41 km/h. Author of the Dot Robot techno-thriller series for Penguin Random House: Dot Robot, Atomic Swarm, Cyber Gold. Completed MIT Sloan’s Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy programme. Has sat on judging panels for the BAFTA Video Games Awards and the Media Guardian Innovation Awards. Keynote and hosting work with Vodafone, Samsung, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Sony, Audi, BMW, BP, Disney, Porsche, Salesforce, Royal Caribbean and BT. Biography Twelve years on Channel 5’s The Gadget Show is, among other things, twelve years of explaining emerging technology to an audience that did not study engineering. Jason Bradbury presented the programme from its 2004 launch through 2016, by which point he had also set multiple Guinness World Records on air, the most cited being a jet-powered street luge clocked at 186.41 km/h on the show’s 200th episode. The broadcasting work sits alongside a second strand of authorship. The Dot Robot series for Penguin Random House (Dot Robot, Atomic Swarm, Cyber Gold) is technology fiction for younger readers, and the same instinct runs through his keynote work: take a complicated technical subject, find the human stakes, hold attention. The keynote material has tightened as AI has moved up the boardroom agenda. Bradbury completed MIT Sloan’s Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy course, and his 2026 talk The AI Advantage introduces a “6 Degrees of AI” framework intended to give business audiences a structured way to read AI impact in their own sector rather than a generic horizon scan. He is most commonly booked by organisations that want a single credible figure to anchor a technology day, keynote on AI in the morning, host panels in the afternoon, hold the room. Clients across that work include Vodafone, Samsung, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, BMW, BP, Porsche, Disney and Salesforce. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence for business audiences Sector impact of generative AI Future of work and automation Emerging consumer technology Robotics and autonomous systems Innovation and product disruption Technology event hosting and moderation Ideal for Technology summits and innovation days that need a single anchor across keynote and host roles Sales kick-offs and customer conferences using AI as the headline theme Boards and executive offsites looking for an accessible read on AI sector impact Awards ceremonies and brand events with a technology adjacency Audience outcomes A working mental model of where AI is heading across the next decade, mapped to the audience’s own sector Sharper questions to ask vendors, internal teams and consultants about AI claims A concrete sense of which AI use cases are credible now versus speculative Reduced sense that AI is a single undifferentiated wave, replaced with a structured view of where it lands

Why organisations work with Nayla Al Khaja She is the first woman to direct a feature film in the UAE, which means her observations on inclusion in restrictive professional cultures come from lived practice, not commentary. She built and runs her own production company, Nayla Al Khaja Films, and founded The Scene Club, the UAE’s first independent film club, giving her a track record of standing up creative institutions where none existed. Her debut feature Three premiered at the Red Sea International Film Festival and released theatrically across the GCC and MENA, evidence of commercial credibility alongside cultural pioneering. Variety named her one of the 50 Most Powerful Personalities in Arab Cinema, a useful external marker for buyers who want a credentialled voice on the Gulf creative economy. She works in Arabic and English at native level, which makes her usable for regional events in the UAE and Saudi Arabia as well as international audiences. Biography highlights First female film director in the United Arab Emirates and CEO of Nayla Al Khaja Films since 2005. BA in film studies, Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University), Canada, on a UAE government scholarship. Founder of The Scene Club, the UAE’s first independent film club, established 2007. Director of Three (2024), her debut feature, which premiered at the Red Sea International Film Festival and released theatrically across the GCC and MENA. Director of BAAB, scored by two-time Academy Award winner A.R. Rahman, with cinematography by Rogier Stoffers ASC. Named to Variety’s 50 Most Powerful Personalities in Arab Cinema (2020); Visionary of the Year, Arabian Business Awards (2011); TEDx speaker on women in Arab cinema. Biography The UAE had no female film director before Nayla Al Khaja. She became the first, then built the production company, the film club and the audience that the country needed for a domestic film industry to be possible at all. That is the work she draws on when she speaks. Al Khaja studied mass communication at Dubai Women’s College, then took a UAE government scholarship to Ryerson University in Toronto for a degree in film studies. She returned and founded what is now Nayla Al Khaja Films in 2005, and in 2007 opened The Scene Club, the country’s first independent film society. Both still operate. Her debut feature Three premiered at the Red Sea International Film Festival in December 2023 and released across the GCC and wider MENA region in early 2024. Her second feature, BAAB, was scored by A.R. Rahman and shot by Rogier Stoffers ASC, two collaborators with serious international standing. Variety placed her in its 50 Most Powerful Personalities in Arab Cinema. For corporate audiences, her usefulness is direct. She is asked how a woman builds a career inside an industry that has no women in it, how a creative business gets capitalised in a market that does not yet exist, and how cultural representation actually shifts when someone takes the job rather than waits for the policy. Her answers come from doing it. Key speaking topics Women in male-dominated industries Creative entrepreneurship in the Gulf Cultural representation in film and media Building a career under restrictive cultural conditions The UAE and Saudi creative economy Storytelling and brand communication Resilience and the long arc of a creative career Ideal for Conferences on women in leadership and inclusion, particularly in the GCC and Levant Corporate diversity, talent and ERG events for organisations operating across the Middle East Creative industry summits, brand and marketing leadership audiences Regional government, tourism and cultural authority programmes on the Gulf creative economy Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how women break through in industries where there is no precedent for them. A clearer view of how the Gulf creative economy actually functions, from someone who built inside it. Specific stories about getting a feature film made in a market that did not previously support one. Practical observations on cultural representation that are usable for brand, marketing and communications teams. A keynote presence that audiences in the region recognise and respond to.

Why organisations work with Rikki Arundel A category-defining UK voice on trans and non-binary inclusion at work, with the rare combination of an MSc in Gender Research from the University of Hull and twenty years of lived experience as an openly trans speaker. Inaugural recipient of The Speaker Awards Lifetime Achievement Award (2024) and a PSAE Speaker Hall of Fame inductee, signals that this is a senior practitioner, not a first-person-story booking. Founder and first president of the UK and Ireland Professional Speaking Association, which means a level of platform craft that allows hard subject matter to land with executive audiences without defensiveness. Practical content for managers and ERG sponsors: what to say when someone comes out, how policy holds up under challenge, and where unconscious bias actually shows up in promotion and customer-facing decisions. A track record across police forces, NHS trusts, financial services and government, including Sussex and Surrey Police, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust, Fidelity International and the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Biography highlights Founder and first president, Professional Speaking Association (UK and Ireland). MSc in Gender Research, University of Hull. PSAE Speaker Hall of Fame, Professional Speaking Association. Inaugural Speaker Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, 2024. Named one of 50 LGBT Icons in the 2017 UK Pride 50th anniversary list. TEDx speaker, including “Why is Gender Identity so Important?” at TEDxFidelityInternational. Biography Most organisations have a trans inclusion policy. Far fewer have managers who know what to do when an employee comes out at work, when a customer files a complaint about pronouns, or when a journalist asks how the company will hold its position. Rikki Arundel’s work sits in that gap between policy language and operational practice. The credibility for that work is unusually layered. Rikki founded the Professional Speaking Association in the UK and Ireland and served as its first president, then publicly transitioned in 2002 and rebuilt a speaking career around gender and inclusion. An MSc in Gender Research from the University of Hull underpins the content, and a PSAE Speaker Hall of Fame induction reflects the platform craft. The substance is practical. Rikki separates sex from gender for non-specialist audiences, walks managers through the moments where inclusion is actually tested, and addresses how policy holds up when challenged externally. The aim is behavioural change inside teams, not awareness for its own sake. Recognition has tracked the work. The Speaker Awards named Rikki the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award recipient in 2024, and Rikki was listed among 50 LGBT Icons during the 2017 UK Pride 50th anniversary. Clients include Sussex and Surrey Police, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust, Fidelity International, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and Atalian Servest UK and Ireland. Key speaking topics Trans and non-binary inclusion in the workplace Sex, gender and social identity LGBTQ discrimination and harassment Unconscious bias in recruitment and promotion Inclusive leadership for managers ERG enablement for Pride and LGBT History Month Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads designing inclusion programmes that need to survive external scrutiny. ERG and Pride network sponsors planning LGBT History Month, Pride and Trans Day of Visibility events that have to do more than mark a date. Line managers and people partners in regulated sectors, including policing, healthcare, financial services and government. Boards and executive teams seeking a credible briefing on trans inclusion before a public position is required. Audience outcomes A working separation of sex, gender identity and gender expression that managers can use in real conversations. Specific scripts and behaviours for the moment a colleague comes out as trans or non-binary at work. A clearer view of where unconscious bias actually shows up in hiring, promotion and customer-facing decisions. A framework for ERG leaders to plan inclusion content that is substantive rather than performative.

Why organisations work with Patrick Chappatte He has spent thirty years drawing on deadline for serious newspapers, including a two-decade run for The New York Times International Edition. That gives audiences a reading of global affairs that almost no other speaker can offer: not commentary about journalism, but the work itself, performed live. He is the only non-American to win the Overseas Press Club of America’s Thomas Nast Award, and he has won it three times. That is the senior credential in his field and it is verifiable from a named external body. He chairs the Freedom Cartoonists Foundation, founded with Kofi Annan and Jean Plantu. That places him at the centre of the international press freedom conversation in a way few keynote speakers can match. His live-drawing format gives a room something it rarely has: an unrepeatable visual record of the conversation, produced in real time. It works as keynote, as conference closer, and as graphic facilitation of a leadership meeting. He brings firsthand graphic reportage from Gaza, Nairobi, Central America, death row in the United States, and Silicon Valley. The material is specific, not generic, and gives a corporate audience an honest view of issues it normally only reads about. Biography highlights In-house editorial cartoonist for The New York Times International Edition, 2001 to 2019. Three-time winner of the Overseas Press Club of America Thomas Nast Award (2011, 2015, 2018); the only non-American to have done so. Current publications include The Boston Globe, Le Canard enchaine, La Tribune Dimanche, Le Temps and NZZ am Sonntag. Honorary Doctorate from EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne), awarded 2022. Named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2006. Chairs the Geneva-based Freedom Cartoonists Foundation, which awards the Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award. Two TED talks: “The power of cartoons” (2010) and “A free world needs satire” (2019). Biography The New York Times stopped running political cartoons in its international edition in 2019. Patrick Chappatte had drawn there twice a week since 2001. He used the moment to argue, in a TED talk that has since been viewed millions of times, that a free press needs satire, and that the retreat from cartooning is one of the quieter signals of where public discourse is heading. That argument is grounded in three decades of work on serious deadlines. Chappatte’s drawings appear in The Boston Globe, Le Canard enchaine, La Tribune Dimanche, Le Temps, and NZZ am Sonntag. He has won the Overseas Press Club of America’s Thomas Nast Award three times, in 2011, 2015 and 2018, the only non-American to have done so. EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2022. He is also a pioneer of graphic journalism. Since 1995 he has produced long-form comics reportage from Gaza, the Nairobi slums, Central American gang territory, death row in the United States, and Silicon Valley. His 2009 work on cluster munitions in southern Lebanon became an animated documentary that aired on Swiss and French television. The Inside Death Row series, produced with the journalist Anne-Frederique Widmann for the Times in 2016, remains one of the most cited examples of the form. Chappatte chairs the Freedom Cartoonists Foundation in Geneva, founded with Kofi Annan and the French cartoonist Jean Plantu. The foundation awards the Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award. For senior audiences, he draws live, in real time, against the conversation in the room, and uses that work as the basis for an argument about why visual thinking, satire, and free expression matter to organisations that operate in contested public space. Key speaking topics Press freedom and the corporate stake in free expression Visual thinking and graphic journalism Satire as a method for engaging contested issues Live-drawing keynotes and conference closers Global affairs through the lens of a working editorial cartoonist Democracy, polarisation and the limits of public discourse Ideal for Annual conferences and leadership offsites looking for a closing keynote that produces a visible record of the day Editorial, communications and brand leadership teams working through reputational risk on contested public issues Boards and senior groups examining geopolitics, democratic backsliding, and the limits of corporate speech Media, publishing and creative organisations engaging with the future of journalism Audience outcomes A clearer view of why satire and visual journalism still matter inside serious organisations, drawn from a working practitioner A live visual record of the session that can be used afterwards as a communication asset A sharper feel for how global affairs read from outside an American or Anglo-Saxon frame A grounded argument for why free expression is now a corporate risk question, not only a civic one

Why organisations work with Lisa Sanders She has spent two decades publicly working through cases that defeated other doctors, in The New York Times Magazine and on Netflix, which makes her unusually good at showing leaders how an expert actually reasons when the obvious answer is wrong. Her column is the documented inspiration for House M.D., and she served as a technical adviser on the show, so the diagnostic method she teaches is the one a global audience already recognises as serious. As Medical Director of Yale New Haven Health System’s Long COVID Consultation Clinic, she works every week on a condition with no clean test and no settled science, which is the closest analogue most executives will find to the ambiguity of their own strategic problems. She moved from an Emmy-winning CBS News career into medicine at Yale, which gives her a rare ability to translate clinical reasoning into language a board can use without dilution. Her books with Penguin Random House (Every Patient Tells a Story, Diagnosis) give the talk a citable spine and a body of work buyers can put in front of their leadership team before the date. Biography highlights Professor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine and Medical Director of the Yale New Haven Health System Long COVID Consultation Clinic. Author of the New York Times Magazine «Diagnosis» column since 2002, the basis for the Netflix series Diagnosis (2019). Technical adviser on the Fox series House M.D., which was inspired by her column. Author of Every Patient Tells a Story (Penguin Random House, 2009) and Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries (Penguin Random House, 2019). Recipient of the John P. McGovern Award for Humanities in Medicine and the Black Pearl Written Media Award. Earlier career as a producer at CBS News, where she was part of an Emmy-winning team before entering medicine at Yale. Biography Most diagnostic errors are not caused by missing information. They are caused by a clinician who recognises a pattern too quickly and stops looking. That observation, drawn from twenty years of cases in The New York Times Magazine column «Diagnosis,» is the foundation of Lisa Sanders’ work with senior leaders. She is Professor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine and Medical Director of the Yale New Haven Health System Long COVID Consultation Clinic, where her caseload is dominated by patients whose symptoms do not yet have a settled scientific explanation. That is also the practical setting for the method she teaches: how to hold a problem open long enough to investigate it properly, and how to recognise when confidence has run ahead of evidence. Her public reach is unusual for a working academic physician. The «Diagnosis» column has run in the NYT Magazine since 2002, was the inspiration for the Fox series House M.D., and became a Netflix docuseries in 2019. She is the author of Every Patient Tells a Story and Diagnosis, both with Penguin Random House, and a recipient of the John P. McGovern Award for Humanities in Medicine. Before medicine she spent more than a decade at CBS News, where she was part of an Emmy-winning team. That earlier career is why her sessions land with non-clinical audiences: she can take the structure of clinical reasoning, strip out the jargon, and make it operable for a board wrestling with a decision the data will not resolve on its own. Key speaking topics Diagnostic reasoning under uncertainty Decision-making when the data is incomplete Avoiding premature closure and confirmation bias Long COVID and the limits of medical evidence Communication between experts and non-experts Leadership lessons from clinical practice Ideal for Boards and executive teams making high-stakes calls on incomplete information. CEOs, CSOs, and transformation leaders working through ambiguous strategic problems. Healthcare systems, life sciences leadership, and clinical risk and quality functions. Professional services and investment firms whose work depends on judgement under uncertainty. Audience outcomes A practical sense of how expert diagnosticians slow down inference when the stakes are high. A clearer view of how pattern recognition becomes a liability in unfamiliar problems. Specific habits for surfacing a second hypothesis before a decision is locked in. A working vocabulary for talking about uncertainty with teams and boards without losing authority. A more honest read on the difference between confidence and accuracy in their own decision-making.

Why organisations work with Princess Rym Ali She has reported on a major conflict from inside it. Her Baghdad coverage for CNN during the 2003 invasion gives her an editorial instinct for how facts, narratives, and reputations move under pressure that few corporate communicators ever develop. She built a working institution, not a campaign. The Jordan Media Institute is a functioning Arab journalism school she founded in 2007, which gives her practical authority on how educational and editorial standards actually take hold in a region. She leads the Anna Lindh Foundation across 42 Euro-Mediterranean member states. The role gives her a working brief on intercultural dialogue at scale, including how to convene parties who fundamentally disagree. Her credentials are issued by named bodies, not bureaus: a Columbia Journalism Award, France’s Legion of Honour, and a Coventry University honorary doctorate. Buyers can verify each. Biography highlights Founder, Jordan Media Institute (2007), the first Arab non-profit centre of excellence for journalism education. President, Anna Lindh Foundation (since 2021), succeeding French politician Elisabeth Guigou. CNN Baghdad correspondent, 2001 to 2004; previously with BBC, UPI, Bloomberg TV, Dubai TV, and Radio Monte-Carlo Moyen-Orient. Knight of the French Legion of Honour; Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Award (2011); Ischia International Journalism Award for Best International Journalist (2011); Coventry University honorary doctorate (2013). Master’s in Journalism, Columbia University; DEA in Political Science, Sciences Po Paris; MA English Literature, Sorbonne. Board of Commissioners, Royal Film Commission of Jordan, since 2005; President, Amman International Film Festival, since 2017. Biography Most organisations underestimate how much of their credibility depends on the information environment around them, not the messages they send into it. Princess Rym Ali has worked on both sides of that environment, first as a CNN correspondent reporting from Baghdad during the 2003 invasion, then as the founder of an Arab journalism school built to raise the editorial standards leaders eventually have to operate inside. The Jordan Media Institute, which she founded in 2007, is the part of her record that explains the rest. It is a functioning institution, not a campaign or a foundation grant. Building it forced her to make decisions about ethics, curriculum, and editorial independence that most commentators on media only describe. That practical grounding is what shapes her view on how trust is built and lost in an organisation. Since 2021 she has been President of the Anna Lindh Foundation, the Euro-Mediterranean intergovernmental body whose 42 member states span a fault line of contested politics, religion, and migration. The role puts her in the middle of conversations that most leaders only see in summary, and gives her a working method for convening people who disagree without collapsing into platitudes. Her credentials are issued by serious institutions: Columbia University, Sciences Po, the Sorbonne, the French Republic. The argument behind them is what matters. She has done the editorial work, built the institution, and now runs the convening platform. For a board navigating reputation, cross-cultural risk, or the civic dimensions of its operating context, that combination of editorial judgement and institutional discipline is rare. Key speaking topics Media credibility and organisational reputation Information literacy in fragmented environments Freedom of expression and editorial responsibility Intercultural dialogue across the Euro-Mediterranean Values-based leadership under public scrutiny Higher education and civic culture Women’s leadership in media and public institutions Ideal for Boards and executive committees managing reputation across regulatory, political, and cultural lines. Heads of communications, corporate affairs, and public policy responsible for credibility in contested information environments. Leadership audiences in media, education, philanthropy, and international institutions. Convenings on cross-cultural strategy, particularly involving the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. Audience outcomes A sharper read on how editorial decisions, algorithmic curation, and platform incentives shape what audiences treat as fact. A working sense of what intercultural dialogue at institutional scale actually requires, drawn from the Anna Lindh Foundation’s 42-member-state remit. A concrete view of how a regional educational institution is built and sustained, taken from the Jordan Media Institute case. Honest framing of the limits of communications strategy when the underlying information environment is fragmented.

Why organisations work with Mark Wilkinson Pairs an operational safety credential, Chartered Member of the Institute of Safety and Health, with personality diversity practice through Equilibria’s E-Colours framework. That combination is unusual on the speaker circuit, where wellbeing voices rarely carry frontline safety standing. Translates personality difference into safety behaviour. The argument that an extroverted risk-taker and a cautious analyst will hear the same toolbox talk in opposite ways gives leaders a concrete way to redesign briefings, supervision and incident review. Lived recovery from collapse, addiction, bankruptcy and depression gives the resilience material first-hand authority. The story is supported by a published book, Life Remixed, endorsed by Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff. Works comfortably across heavy industry, energy and corporate audiences, including engagements such as Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival, and adapts the same material for a leadership offsite or a frontline safety stand-down. Brings the production craft of a former Ministry of Sound resident DJ into the room. Music, video and live elements are part of the delivery, which lands with audiences who switch off during conventional keynotes. Biography highlights Chartered Member of the Institute of Safety and Health (CMIOSH) and Fellow of the Institute of Leadership (FIoL). Certified E-Colours personality diversity practitioner through Equilibria, working with leadership teams across energy, sport and corporate sectors. Author of Life Remixed: Looking Beyond The Dance To Face The Music, published 2021, with foreword endorsements from Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff. Host of the Life Remixed podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Former international house music DJ with a Ministry of Sound residency, performances in 65 countries and a UK Top 10 chart entry as part of Dab Hands with the remix of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love”. Speaker at Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival and across health, safety and leadership programmes for industrial and corporate clients. Biography Behavioural safety has a translation problem. Two people on the same site, given the same briefing, will walk away with different versions of what was said and different views of the risk in front of them. Wilkinson’s working argument is that personality difference is a structural variable in safety and engagement, not a soft factor to be managed around. He works that argument through Equilibria’s E-Colours framework, where he is a certified practitioner, and through his Chartered standing with the Institute of Safety and Health. The combination matters: the diagnostic of human difference is paired with operational health and safety credibility, which is what gives the work purchase in heavy industry and energy clients rather than only in leadership development settings. The personal story sits behind the professional one. A former Ministry of Sound resident DJ with a UK Top 10 chart credit, Wilkinson collapsed at 33 and lost income, home and relationship across an 18-month recovery. He rebuilt through health and safety work and personal development study, and wrote Life Remixed, endorsed by Bob Proctor and Marci Shimoff, as the account of that rebuild. For organisations, that biography is useful because it lets him hold a room of frontline operators and a room of senior leaders with the same material. The safety and personality work gives the talk its operational edge. The recovery narrative gives it the emotional weight that makes the safety message actually stick. Key speaking topics Behavioural safety and human factors Personality diversity in the workplace Resilience and personal recovery Mental wellbeing and mindset Leadership communication across personality types Engagement in high-risk operational environments Ideal for Heads of HSE, safety leadership teams and operational directors in energy, construction, aviation and manufacturing HR and culture leads designing engagement, wellbeing or behavioural change programmes Leadership and learning teams running offsites that need a credible voice on personal resilience Frontline conferences and toolbox events where a conventional academic keynote will lose the room Audience outcomes A working model for why the same safety message lands differently across a workforce and what to change about briefings as a result A vocabulary for personality difference that supervisors and team leads can use without specialist training A first-hand account of recovery from collapse and addiction that opens room for honest conversation about wellbeing A reframe of behavioural safety as a leadership and communication problem, not only a compliance one

Why organisations work with Paula Stone Williams A first-person comparative account of professional life as a senior man and a senior woman, drawing on lived experience that almost no other speaker can offer at the executive level. A memoir published by Simon & Schuster (As a Woman, 2021), four TED talks with combined viewership over nine million, and sustained coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and CNN. Substantive content on the mechanics of allyship for male leaders, framed as a practical capability rather than a values statement. A speaker who can address gender equity and LGBTQ+ inclusion in the same keynote without flattening either, useful to organisations where these conversations are usually held in separate rooms. Biography highlights Author of As a Woman: What I Learned About Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy After I Transitioned (Simon & Schuster, 2021), optioned by Cannonball Productions for a limited series. Co-author of She’s My Dad with her son Jonathan Williams. TED, TEDWomen, TEDSummit and TEDxMileHigh speaker; four talks with combined viewership over nine million. Featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, ABC Primetime News, Good Morning America, People Magazine and Red Table Talk. Pastor of preaching and worship at Left Hand Church, Longmont, Colorado. Pastoral counselor with RLT Pathways; doctorate in counseling. Biography Most workplace gender equity programmes are designed by people who have only ever held authority inside one set of expectations. Paula Stone Williams has held senior roles as both a man and a woman, and her keynote work is built on the comparative material that produced. The argument is empirical rather than rhetorical: the same person, the same competence, two markedly different professional experiences. Her memoir As a Woman: What I Learned About Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy After I Transitioned was published by Simon & Schuster in 2021 and has been optioned by Cannonball Productions. Her TED, TEDWomen, TEDSummit and TEDxMileHigh talks have together passed nine million views. The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Good Morning America and People Magazine have covered her work. Alongside the keynote practice she is a pastoral counselor with RLT Pathways and pastor of preaching and worship at Left Hand Church in Longmont, Colorado. The counseling background shapes how she handles the room, which matters in this subject area; audiences leave with material they can act on rather than only feelings they have processed. The most useful thing she gives a corporate audience is a precise account of how allyship behaves in practice. Male leaders who want to support women and LGBTQ+ colleagues are often unsure what the substantive ask actually is. Williams names it directly, with examples, and treats it as a capability that can be learned. Key speaking topics Workplace gender equity LGBTQ+ inclusion in corporate environments Allyship as a practical capability for senior leaders Authority, voice and credibility across gender Storytelling and narrative communication Resilience through identity and career change Bridging cultural and religious divides Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads designing substantive inclusion work after initial awareness programmes. Senior leadership offsites where male executives are the intended audience for an allyship conversation. Women’s leadership networks and ERGs commissioning an external voice on workplace parity. Universities, professional services firms and faith-adjacent institutions navigating LGBTQ+ inclusion under public scrutiny. Audience outcomes A first-person frame of reference for how authority is extended differently to men and women in the same senior role. A concrete vocabulary for what allyship looks like inside a meeting, a hiring decision and a promotion conversation. A view of LGBTQ+ inclusion grounded in lived experience rather than abstract policy language. Material that male leaders, in particular, can repeat back to their teams without feeling they are reciting a script.

Why organisations work with Paris Norriss The Grit Code gives organisations a repeatable method for developing resilience: not a motivational moment, but a structured framework built from both extreme first-hand experience and interviews with more than 50 documented high performers. It can be applied, not just felt. His source material is verified broadcast content. The adventures Paris describes are not anecdotes: they are documented on productions distributed via Amazon Prime and Apple TV. When the Pacific storm or the 40-foot wave hits, no one questions whether the stakes were real. He draws a distinction most resilience speakers do not: between teams that perform well when conditions are manageable and teams that hold when those conditions break down. The gap between the two is where most organisational performance is actually lost. His career spans investment banking, media production, and extreme endurance sport, which means he can translate the mechanics of sustained performance directly into commercial and operational terms, without forcing the adventure metaphor. His speaking record runs from the US Military in Hawaii to DHL in Athens to COP28 in Dubai. The breadth of context is itself evidence that The Grit Code’s framework transfers across sector, culture, and seniority level. Biography highlights Creator of The Grit Code, a structured resilience framework built from extreme endurance experience and research with more than 50 high performers Rowed 4,800km across the Pacific Ocean (California to Hawaii) with the Brothers N Oars team over 39 days (2023), raising funds for the Blue Marine Foundation and the Invictus Games Completed the World Marathon Challenge: 7 marathons on 7 continents in 5 days and 21 hours (2025), having previously run a single marathon Host and Executive Producer of “Guy in Dubai” and “Guy in the Sky,” distributed on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, OSN, and Emirates Airlines across more than 120 countries Founder of Blazing Sand Studios (formerly GID Media Production), an Abu Dhabi-based production company established in 2017 Regular contributor to Dubai Eye radio; business columnist for The National MA (Hons), Business Studies (Finance), University of Edinburgh; earlier career in investment banking and private equity Biography Most organisations discover they have a resilience problem not during planning but when things go wrong. A skilled, well-resourced team will perform competently under normal conditions. Whether that same team can sustain judgement, cohesion, and output when conditions break down is a different question: and one that most leadership development programmes never directly test. Paris Norriss has spent a decade answering it under conditions where the cost of failure was not theoretical. In 2023 he rowed 4,800 kilometres across the Pacific Ocean with the Brothers N Oars team over 39 days: navigating two storms, 40-foot waves, and a near-collision with a cargo ship. In 2025, having previously run a single marathon, he completed the World Marathon Challenge across seven continents in 5 days and 21 hours. The experiences are not the argument. The argument is what they required: a decision-making framework that holds when resources, morale, and conditions are all working against you. The Grit Code is that framework. Structured from both Paris’s own extreme experiences and interviews with more than 50 high performers, it gives organisations a repeatable method for developing the mental durability that sustains performance under real pressure. Paris has applied it across audiences spanning the US Military, DHL, Nokia, and COP28; contexts with little in common except the fundamental challenge of keeping a team functional when nothing is going to plan. His parallel career as founder of Blazing Sand Studios and executive producer of “Guy in Dubai” and “Guy in the Sky”, distributed on Amazon Prime and Apple TV across more than 120 countries, separates him from other speakers working in the same space. He has not merely survived extreme experiences; he has spent a career converting them into narrative form for mass audiences. That capacity to distil high-stakes experience into something transferable and usable is precisely what The Grit Code delivers in an organisational setting. Key speaking topics Mental resilience and performance under pressure Team cohesion in high-stakes environments Leadership in adversity Decision-making under stress The Grit Code framework for building organisational resilience Visual storytelling and narrative in business Adventure filmmaking and destination media Ideal for Leadership and senior management teams preparing for high-pressure transformation, restructuring, or sustained competitive pressure Sales, operations, and commercial teams where consistent output under difficult conditions is a performance priority HR and L&D leaders looking to embed resilience as a systemic organisational capability rather than a wellbeing initiative Conference organisers serving Gulf, Middle East, and international markets seeking a speaker with verified regional credibility and global media distribution Audience outcomes A working definition of grit as a learnable, structured capability – not a fixed personality trait Practical tools for identifying the internal motivational triggers that determine how individuals perform under sustained adversity A clear framework for distinguishing teams that hold under pressure from teams that only perform when conditions are favourable Insight into the mechanics of leadership and decision-making during the specific period when resources, morale, and conditions are all depleted simultaneously Understanding of how internal purpose and motivational alignment sustain team output beyond the point where conventional incentives and management techniques lose traction

Why organisations work with Peter Nelson He has run the same flagship influence programme at Henley Business School for over fifteen years, which means executive cohorts arrive at a method that has been stress-tested across hundreds of senior leaders, not a workshop assembled for the brief. He pioneered the use of professional actors in corporate influence and pitching training, and built the rehearsal-led methodology now common across UK executive education before it was standard practice. His client base spans law firms, asset managers, oil majors, professional services, the European Commission and Army HQ, which gives him a working vocabulary for influence in highly regulated, technically complex and politically sensitive environments. He works at the level of behaviour and live performance, not frameworks: leaders rehearse the actual conversation, board moment or client pitch they will face, with feedback in the room. Biography highlights Executive Fellow, Henley Business School; lead faculty on the “Influence and Impact” programme for over 15 years. Member of the Executive Faculty, Southampton Business School. Works with Cambridge Judge Business School, Warwick Business School and Duke Corporate Education on senior executive development. Pioneered the use of professional actors in business roleplay for influence and pitching training in the 1990s. Client roster includes Man Group, BP, BMW, Motorola, Allen & Overy, Baker & McKenzie, Barclays, Deloitte, ING, McLaren, the NHS, the European Commission and Army HQ. Signature programmes: Influence and Impact, Influencing and Negotiating, Business Pitching, Client Relationship Management, Team Effectiveness. Biography Most executive education on influence stops at the framework. Leaders leave with a model of stakeholder mapping or persuasion archetypes, then walk into a board meeting and revert to slides. The gap between knowing the theory and behaving differently in the room is the practical problem of senior communication, and it is the problem Peter Nelson has spent more than three decades working on. At Henley Business School, where he is an Executive Fellow, Nelson has led the “Influence and Impact” programme for over fifteen years. The same method now runs across Cambridge Judge Business School executive clients, Warwick Business School corporate cohorts, Duke Corporate Education and Southampton Business School, where he sits on the Executive Faculty. Cohorts include senior partners in global law firms, asset managers, professional services boards and policy leaders inside the European Commission and Army HQ. The methodology is distinctive in its mechanics. Nelson brought professional actors into corporate influence and pitching training in the 1990s, before it was standard, so leaders rehearse the actual conversation they will face: the regulator briefing, the new business pitch, the board update, the difficult client renewal. Feedback is delivered live, in the moment, on behaviour rather than theory. The result is a body of practice rather than a body of writing. Clients include Man Group, BP, BMW, Motorola, Allen & Overy, Baker & McKenzie, Barclays, Deloitte, ING and McLaren, and Nelson is most often booked when an organisation has identified that its senior people are technically excellent and commercially under-converting in the moments that matter. Key speaking topics Influence and persuasion at senior levels Executive presence and leadership impact High-stakes business pitching Negotiation skills Senior client relationships Presentation skills for leaders Team effectiveness Ideal for Partners and senior leaders in law, professional services and asset management preparing for client pitches and renewals Executive committees and boards developing presence and senior communication capability Sales, business development and relationship management leaders selling to sophisticated buyers HR and L&D heads commissioning executive development on influence, negotiation and leadership impact Audience outcomes A concrete sense of how senior audiences read presence, and what to change in the next conversation that matters Sharper command of the pitch, the board update and the negotiation set-piece, rehearsed against live feedback rather than discussed in abstract Specific tools for moving from technical credibility to commercial conversion in client-facing moments A working vocabulary for coaching their own teams on influence and impact after the session

Why organisations work with Maria Ressa She has tested platform governance arguments against actual prosecution, exile threats and a coordinated state-backed disinformation campaign, which gives her a clarity on digital risk that academic experts rarely match. As co-founder of the Real Facebook Oversight Board and co-leader of Columbia’s Technology and Democracy Initiative, she sits at the centre of the policy conversation shaping how governments will regulate platforms and AI. Her Nobel citation specifically named the defence of free expression as a precondition for democracy, giving leadership and ESG audiences a credible voice on information integrity as a governance issue, not a communications one. She runs a working newsroom that has documented platform manipulation in real time, so her arguments come with primary evidence rather than secondary commentary. How to Stand Up to a Dictator gives her a published thesis on the architecture of digital authoritarianism that boards and policy teams can engage with in advance of a session. Biography highlights 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, jointly with Dmitry Muratov, for work safeguarding freedom of expression. Co-founder and CEO of Rappler, the Manila-based investigative news organisation she launched in 2012. Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs; Distinguished Fellow and co-leader of the Technology and Democracy Initiative at SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics. Author of How to Stand Up to a Dictator (Harper, 2022), a New York Times bestseller, and Seeds of Terror (2003). 2021 UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize; 2018 Golden Pen of Freedom from the World Association of News Publishers. Time Person of the Year 2018; Time 100 Most Influential People; BBC 100 Women. Nearly two decades as CNN bureau chief in Manila and Jakarta; former SVP for News and Current Affairs at ABS-CBN. Biography The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize citation named freedom of expression as a precondition for democracy. It was the first time since 1935 that the prize had been given to working journalists, and the choice was not symbolic. Ressa shared it with Dmitry Muratov for a body of work that treats disinformation, platform power and the erosion of shared reality as the defining governance problem of the decade. Her vantage point is unusual. She co-founded Rappler in Manila in 2012, then ran it through years of state-backed harassment, criminal charges and an online campaign that the company itself documented in forensic detail. That experience produced a working theory of how engagement-driven platforms, weaponised by political actors, dismantle public trust and institutional legitimacy from below. The argument is laid out in How to Stand Up to a Dictator, the Harper book that became a New York Times bestseller and Princeton’s Class of 2027 Pre-read. She now sits at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs as a Professor of Professional Practice and co-leads the Technology and Democracy Initiative at the Institute of Global Politics. The role pairs naturally with her work on the Real Facebook Oversight Board, an independent body of journalists, academics and activists holding Meta to account on content governance. Earlier in her career she opened CNN’s Manila bureau, ran its Jakarta bureau through the post-9/11 years, and led news at ABS-CBN; her 2003 book Seeds of Terror remains a reference on Jemaah Islamiyah. For corporate audiences, the value sits in the bridge she builds between platform mechanics and executive decision-making. AI accelerates everything she has been documenting for a decade, and the regulatory response, in Brussels, Washington and Manila, is now arriving in the operating environment of any business with a public-facing reputation. Key speaking topics Disinformation and the integrity of the information ecosystem Platform governance and Big Tech accountability AI ethics and the future of public trust Press freedom as institutional infrastructure Democratic resilience under digital authoritarianism Leadership and moral courage in contested environments Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams reassessing reputational and regulatory risk in an AI-mediated information environment Chief Communications Officers, Chief Risk Officers and General Counsel responsible for platform exposure and disinformation response Public-sector and policy audiences working on technology regulation, democratic resilience and ESG frameworks Leadership programmes seeking a serious voice on values, courage and institutional integrity Audience outcomes A working model of how engagement-driven platforms shape public perception of organisations, leaders and policy. Direct evidence, drawn from Rappler’s own reporting, of how coordinated disinformation campaigns are designed and executed. A clear read on where AI regulation and platform accountability are heading across major jurisdictions. A sharper sense of what leadership looks like when institutional norms are under pressure, told through a Nobel-recognised case. Language and frameworks for treating information integrity as a governance issue at board level, not a communications problem.