Storytelling & Business Communication

Why organisations work with Michael Maisey Lived experience that lands in rooms where wellbeing decks usually do not, drawn from five years in Feltham Young Offenders Institute and a documented twenty-year rebuild. Operates an active service organisation. The CIP Project runs residential workshops from a 25-acre Devon retreat centre, giving him a working view of what actually helps people recover, not a theoretical one. Two published works that hold up to corporate scrutiny: Young Offender (Pan Macmillan, 2019) and Change is Possible: The Seven Stages to Healing Trauma (2025). The second gives him a named framework, not just a story. Civic recognition by the London Borough of Hounslow and the Metropolitan Police in 2014, a useful third-party validation when buyers vet speakers with criminal-record backgrounds. Talks designed to give managers practical language for the empathy-and-communication conversation, rather than a motivational arc that leaves the audience moved but unequipped. Biography highlights Founder of The CIP Project, a UK non-profit operating from a 25-acre retreat centre in Devon. Author of Young Offender: My Life from Armed Robber to Local Hero, published by Pan Macmillan in 2019. Author of Change is Possible: The Seven Stages to Healing Trauma, published in 2025. TEDx speaker. Talk title: “The Healing Power of Connection”. Honoured by the London Borough of Hounslow and the Metropolitan Police in 2014 for services to the community. Over 17 years sober. Public advocacy work across UK prisons, including author visits to HMYOI Aylesbury. Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes do not fail on intent. They fail on permission. Employees are offered resources, apps and policies, but rarely the model of what an honest conversation about mental health, addiction or trauma actually sounds like in a working environment. Michael Maisey’s contribution is to provide that model in a room of senior managers, with credibility earned outside the wellness industry. His route into the work is unusually direct. At sixteen he was sentenced for armed robbery and spent much of his teenage years in Feltham Young Offenders Institute. The rebuild that followed produced two things organisations care about: a published autobiography with Pan Macmillan, Young Offender, in 2019; and a working non-profit, The CIP Project, founded in 2018 on a 25-acre site in Devon, supporting people with addiction, mental health, PTSD and childhood trauma. A second book, Change is Possible: The Seven Stages to Healing Trauma, followed in 2025 and gives him a structured framework rather than a single biographical story. His TEDx talk, “The Healing Power of Connection”, is the most-quoted piece of his keynote content in workplace settings. In 2014, the London Borough of Hounslow and the Metropolitan Police recognised him formally for services to the community. For a head of people or culture, the practical value is twofold. Maisey can hold a room on the subjects that most speakers either soften or skirt: suicidal ideation, addiction, the texture of trauma. And he can hand managers a vocabulary for the empathy-and-communication conversation that has otherwise sat in the wellbeing policy and never made it onto the floor. Key speaking topics Workplace mental health Empathy and compassion at work Trauma recovery Addiction and the workplace Personal transformation and lived experience Communication around wellbeing Ideal for CHROs, heads of people, heads of culture and wellbeing leads commissioning workplace mental health content Internal manager populations responsible for direct conversations about wellbeing Employee resource groups and DEI forums focused on mental health and recovery Conference programmes seeking a lived-experience anchor on wellbeing alongside clinical or academic speakers Audience outcomes Sharper language for raising mental health, addiction or trauma in a workplace conversation without making it clinical A more concrete view of what recovery actually requires, drawn from operating a residential support model Permission, observed in the room, for senior people to speak honestly about their own experience A framework, drawn from the seven stages in Change is Possible, for thinking about trauma in stages rather than as a single event

Why organisations work with Ben Hanlin He has spent twenty years professionally holding the attention of audiences who did not ask to be entertained, a craft most keynote speakers approximate and never master. His engagement and rapport techniques are not theoretical. They are the working methods of a magician adapted for sales teams, client conversations and conference stages, and they were sharp enough to win Best TEDx Speaker at The Speaker Awards 2024. He is one of the few speakers who can credibly anchor a full conference day, opening with a keynote, hosting the agenda, and closing with the awards, without changing register. Major brand audiences including Google, PwC, Coca-Cola and Amplifi book him for the same reason: he reliably resets the energy of a room and gives an audience something to remember about it the next morning. The Speaker Awards 2024 triple, Speaker of the Year, Best Newcomer and Best TEDx Speaker, was judged by industry bookers on content, delivery and bookability. That combination of recognitions in a single year is rare. Biography highlights Creator, writer and star of ITV2’s hidden-camera magic series Tricked, three series broadcast 2013 to 2016. Presenter of Breaking Magic on the Discovery Channel. Series 12 finalist on ITV’s Dancing on Ice (2020), finishing fourth. Speaker of the Year, Best Newcomer and Best TEDx Speaker at The Speaker Awards 2024. TEDx London speaker, “How to Create INSTANT Engagement and Connection” (2024). Combined online following of two million plus across YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Biography Most keynote speakers learn to hold a room by stepping onto a corporate stage. Ben Hanlin learned it on the street, in pubs and on prime-time television, where the audience has not agreed in advance to pay attention and the speaker has roughly four seconds to earn it. Twenty years of working as a professional magician is, among other things, twenty years of solving that problem. That craft moved onto television with Tricked, the ITV2 hidden-camera magic series he created, wrote and presented across three series between 2013 and 2016, followed by Breaking Magic on the Discovery Channel and a fourth-place finish on series 12 of Dancing on Ice. The work travels: his combined audience across YouTube, Instagram and Facebook now sits above two million. The keynote work is a translation of the same discipline. Hanlin teaches the working methods a magician uses to create rapport, hold attention and make a message stick, applied to sales conversations, client meetings, leadership presence and the inside of a conference room. In 2024 his TEDx London talk “How to Create INSTANT Engagement and Connection” was named Best TEDx Speaker at The Speaker Awards. At the same ceremony he was also named Speaker of the Year and Best Newcomer, judged by industry bookers on content, delivery and bookability. Organisations including Google, PwC, Coca-Cola and Amplifi book him in three modes: keynote on engagement and human connection, full-day conference facilitation, and high-energy awards hosting. The common thread is the same craft applied at different scales, the ability to walk into a room of distracted people and leave it as a connected audience. Key speaking topics Engagement and human connection Instant rapport and audience attention Communication under pressure Innovation and creative confidence Resilience and dealing with failure Conference hosting and awards facilitation Ideal for Sales conferences, kick-offs and national sales meetings Awards nights and gala dinners requiring a host who can also deliver content Leadership and client-facing teams working on rapport, presence and communication Full-day conferences needing a single anchor across keynote, facilitation and after-dinner roles Audience outcomes A working set of rapport and attention techniques drawn from twenty years of professional magic, usable the next morning in client meetings. Sharper instincts for reading a room and recovering it when energy drops. A clearer sense of how to make a message land and be remembered. A shared, high-energy moment that resets the tone of the conference or sales event.

Why organisations work with Amy Carroll She works on the specific moments leadership training usually skips: board challenges, negotiations that stall, team conversations that tip into defensiveness. Leaders leave with something they can apply on Monday, not a model to file. Her 7 Partner Mindset methodology, built on the licensed Predator, Prey or Partner model from Pat Kirkland Leadership, gives executives a usable vocabulary for power dynamics most leaders feel but cannot name. The client list runs through organisations that do not buy soft skills lightly: Nestle, Novartis, Cisco, UBS, Ernst and Young, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the European Stability Mechanism. Thirty years across psychology, executive coaching, and psychiatric and managed-care settings give her range on human behaviour that communications trainers rarely carry. Recognition from Global Gurus, including a Top 20 position in the Communication category, places her among a small group of named practitioners in the field. Biography highlights Author of The Ego Tango: How to Get More of What You Want More Often with Less Hassle, Using These 7 Partner Mindset Techniques Host of Partner Up! with Amy Carroll on VoiceAmerica Business Channel, available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify Ranked among Global Gurus’ Top 30 Communication Professionals, placing #18 in 2023 Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, with a BA in Psychology Coaching and training clients include Nestle, Novartis, Microsoft, Cisco, UBS, Ernst and Young, Procter and Gamble, Medtronic, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and the European Stability Mechanism Licenses the Predator, Prey or Partner model from Pat Kirkland Leadership Inc. and built the 7 Partner Mindset methodology on top of it Biography Most leadership failures happen in conversation. A board member challenges an assumption and the chief executive concedes ground she should have held. A senior partner pushes harder than the client will accept. A team leader in a performance review slips from clarity into apology. The cost is rarely dramatic, but it compounds, and it sits outside what strategy decks or standard communications training address. Amy Carroll works on that gap. Her 7 Partner Mindset methodology, built on the licensed Predator, Prey or Partner model from Pat Kirkland Leadership, gives executives a working vocabulary for the power dynamics they feel in the room but cannot usually name. The framework draws from three decades in psychology, executive coaching, and earlier work in psychiatric and managed-care settings, which is a wider behavioural base than most communications coaches bring. Her book, The Ego Tango, sets out the methodology through cases from the workshops she runs with multinational clients. The client list is instructive: Nestle, Novartis, Cisco, UBS, Ernst and Young, Medtronic, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the European Stability Mechanism. These are organisations where a senior leader’s composure under challenge is a measurable commercial asset. She hosts Partner Up! with Amy Carroll on VoiceAmerica Business Channel, and has been named among Global Gurus’ Top 30 Communication Professionals, including a Top 20 placement in 2023. The recognition is useful context; the substance is the work itself, which is a repeatable method for holding authority when the stakes rise. Key speaking topics Leadership communication under pressure Power and influence in senior conversations Executive presence and authority High-stakes negotiation dynamics Emotional intelligence for senior leaders Storytelling and persuasion in business Coaching culture and leadership development Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams preparing for board, investor, or regulator-facing conversations Partners and client-facing leaders in professional services and financial services HR and Learning leads building executive development programmes Senior women navigating authority in traditionally male-dominated rooms Audience outcomes A named vocabulary for the power dynamics that sit beneath difficult conversations, so leaders can diagnose what is happening in the moment Specific techniques from the 7 Partner Mindset model to stay composed when challenged and to influence without escalating A sharper read on their own default patterns under stress, including where they concede and where they overreach Language for feedback, negotiation, and disagreement that holds authority without damaging the relationship A practical sense of how senior presence is built through behaviour, not positioning

Why organisations work with Jenny Radcliffe She has spent decades being paid to break into client buildings, networks and confidence; the briefings she gives boards are based on what worked, not what theory predicts. She runs Human Factor Security, the consultancy she founded to handle authorised physical-access and social-engineering testing for organisations that want their human layer stress-tested rather than surveyed. Her induction into the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame placed her among a small group recognised for shifting the industry’s view of human risk from a training problem to a security discipline. People Hacker, published by Simon and Schuster, gives senior audiences a single readable account of how cons, pretexts and physical infiltration actually work inside corporate environments. She translates attacker behaviour into specific decisions about hiring, access, vendor management and culture, which is what a CISO’s report to the board usually leaves out. Biography highlights Founder and director of Human Factor Security, the consultancy she set up in 2013 to focus on human-factor risk. Inducted into the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame in 2022 and delivered that year’s Hall of Fame Annual Lecture. Author of People Hacker: Confessions of a Burglar for Hire, Simon and Schuster. Host of the Human Factor podcast, awarded European Best Security Podcast at the 2018 European Blogger Awards. Multiple TEDx speaker on social engineering, deception and influence. Featured “HQ Hunter” on Channel 4’s Hunted, applying her OSINT and undercover tradecraft on screen. Regular keynote contributor at Infosecurity Europe, RANT, Cisco events, Trend Micro events and the PCI Security Standards Council Community Meetings. Biography The fastest way past most corporate security is to ring the doorbell. Jenny Radcliffe has spent her career proving it, working as an authorised social engineer hired to walk into offices, data centres and executive floors using nothing more than confidence, a cover story and a careful read of the people in front of her. Human Factor Security, the consultancy she founded in 2013, runs that work as a discipline rather than a stunt. Clients commission live infiltration tests, pretext calls and on-site assessments; the findings then feed into board-level guidance on how culture, process and physical design create the openings attackers actually use. Her book People Hacker: Confessions of a Burglar for Hire, published by Simon and Schuster, sets out the playbook in detail, and the Human Factor podcast has built a long-running audience among security and risk professionals, winning European Best Security Podcast at the 2018 European Blogger Awards. Television work on Channel 4’s Hunted and multiple TEDx talks have widened the audience well beyond the cyber industry. In 2022 she was inducted into the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame and delivered the Hall of Fame Annual Lecture, “Facta Non Verba: Six Life Lessons from a Social Engineer”. For senior buyers, that recognition matters less than the underlying point: she is one of a small number of voices the security industry now treats as authoritative on the human side of the threat, and she briefs boards in the same plain language she uses to brief her own clients after a successful break-in. Key speaking topics Social engineering and human-factor security Physical-access testing and corporate infiltration Fraud, scams and modern-day con tactics Security culture and workforce behaviour Deception, influence and non-verbal communication Insider threat and pretext attacks Board-level cybersecurity briefing Ideal for CISOs, CSOs and heads of information security commissioning human-risk programmes Boards and executive committees reviewing cyber and operational resilience Heads of risk, compliance and governance overseeing fraud and insider threat Corporate security, facilities and HR leaders responsible for access, vetting and culture Audience outcomes A clear picture of how attackers actually combine pretext, OSINT and physical access against organisations like theirs. Specific control points where human behaviour, not technology, decides whether an attack succeeds. Sharper questions to put to security, HR and facilities teams about access, vetting and incident response. A working vocabulary for discussing social engineering and human risk at board level. Confidence that security awareness can be redesigned around real attacker behaviour rather than generic training.

Why organisations work with Andy Lopata He reframes networking as a leadership discipline. The argument lands with executives who have dismissed the topic as junior or transactional, and gives them a structured way to think about who supports them, how, and why. The Relationship Matrix gives leaders a tangible way to audit their professional support system, identify where it is thin, and decide where to invest. Few speakers in this space work at that level of operational specificity. His mentoring work, anchored in The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring co-authored with Dr Ruth Gotian of Weill Cornell, gives organisations a serious reference point for designing mentoring programmes that retain senior talent. Twenty-five years inside the topic, recognition from the Financial Times and Forbes, and a 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award shortlist place him in a small group of speakers who have built genuine institutional credibility on professional relationships. He works with the cultural problem behind the leadership one: why senior people will not ask for help, and what it costs the organisation when they do not. Biography highlights Author of six books, including Connected Leadership (2020) and The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring (Pearson, 2024, with Dr Ruth Gotian). Shortlisted for the 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award. Two-time board member and former President of the Fellows Community of the Professional Speaking Association UK and Ireland; holder of the PSAE, the PSA’s Hall of Fame distinction. Fellow of the Learning and Performance Institute; member of the Association of Business Mentors and the Meetings Industry Association. Contributor to Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today; host of The Connected Leadership Podcast. Clients include PayPal, Google, Harrods, BBC, HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline, Allen and Overy, Saïd Business School and Brother International Europe. Biography Most senior leaders rise on technical and commercial credibility, then hit a level where the job is mostly relational. They under-invest in mentors, hesitate to ask for help, and end up isolated at exactly the point where their decisions carry the most weight. That gap is what Lopata’s work addresses. For more than twenty-five years he has worked on professional relationships as an executive capability rather than a soft skill. The Financial Times has called him one of Europe’s leading business networking strategists; Forbes has described him as a true master of networking. The label undersells the work. His Relationship Matrix gives leaders a structured way to audit who supports them, where the gaps are, and where to invest. Frameworks like the Seven Stages of Professional Relationships and The Influence Wheel extend that work into stakeholder mapping, influence and senior mentoring practice. His books map the territory in detail. Connected Leadership argues that executive success is built on a deliberate web of relationships, and was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards in 2021. The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, co-authored with Dr Ruth Gotian of Weill Cornell Medicine in 2024, gives organisations a reference text for treating mentoring as a strategic retention and development tool. The book was a runner-up for Leadership Book of the Year at the 2024 Leadership Awards. The institutional weight follows the work. He is a former President of the Fellows Community of the Professional Speaking Association UK and Ireland and holds its PSAE Hall of Fame distinction. He was shortlisted for the 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award, contributes to Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today, and has worked with PayPal, Google, HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline, the BBC and Saïd Business School on the same underlying problem: how senior people stop performing in isolation and start leading through the relationships around them. Key speaking topics Professional relationships as a leadership capability Mentoring strategy and programme design Asking for help and the cost of not asking Vulnerable leadership Referral and influence networks Connected leadership and executive support systems Psychological safety and speaking up at senior level Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and partners moving into senior leadership roles where the work becomes relational CHROs and learning leaders designing mentoring, succession and retention programmes Professional services and partner-track populations where business development depends on relationship quality Sales leaders rebuilding referral networks and account relationships Audience outcomes A clear framework, the Relationship Matrix, for auditing the professional support system around a senior role A different language for mentoring as a strategic asset rather than a benefit programme Specific shifts in how leaders approach asking for help, and why most do not A more honest read on where executive isolation is costing the organisation in retention, succession and decision quality Practical adjustments to how teams use referrals, networks and senior relationships in commercial contexts

Why organisations work with Dave Steele He turns an abstract inclusion agenda into a room of people who have felt something specific. Poetry, song and personal testimony land with audiences in a way a policy deck cannot. He brings a named platform behind the message: the Stand By Me RP community he founded in 2015 is one of the largest RP groups in the world, and his trilogy topped poetry charts in the US and Australia. Scientific and medical institutions trust him to carry the patient and lived-experience voice, from the National Eye Institute at NIH to a Roche ophthalmology feature and the American Foundation for the Blind. Few speakers on disability reach clinical and research audiences at that level. Brand and product work with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam gives him direct fluency in how large companies are approaching accessibility in practice, not just in principle. He delivers as a performer as well as a speaker, which makes him suited to conference mainstage, awards nights and internal culture events where a standard keynote would not move the room. Biography highlights Author of the “Stand By Me RP” poetry trilogy (2016 to 2018); Volume I reached number one poetic release in the US and Australia in its first week. Founder of the Stand By Me RP online community (2015), one of the largest Retinitis Pigmentosa support groups on social media. Subject of the BBC documentary “The Film I’ll Never See” (BBC Our Lives, 2025). Emcee of the 24th Annual Helen Keller Achievement Awards, American Foundation for the Blind; opened the National Eye Institute Intramural Program retreat at NIH (2024). Gave a Special Presentation at the inaugural Personalized RegenMed Forum, hosted by biotech company Cellino in Cambridge, MA, sharing his experience of sight loss through poetry with an audience of regenerative-medicine developers, clinicians and researchers. Performed a commissioned poem at the Paralympic Heritage Flame Lighting Ceremony at Stoke Mandeville, birthplace of the Paralympic movement, ahead of Paris 2024. Trustee of Henshaws; featured by Roche as a change-maker in ophthalmology; collaborator with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam. Biography Most inclusion work still treats disability as an HR category. A poem, delivered in a room of executives, does something a training module cannot. It gives the audience a few minutes inside someone else’s life, and that is what Dave Steele’s work depends on. Steele was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa in 2014. He had been a singer and a car salesman; the diagnosis ended both careers and left him at home in Manchester with four children and mounting debt. In 2015 he started a Facebook page called “Stand By Me RP,” named after a song he had rewritten for a support group. It became one of the largest RP communities on social media and the seed of everything that followed. The poetry came next. His “Stand By Me RP” trilogy, released annually between 2016 and 2018, reached the top of poetry charts in the United States and Australia, and he has since written more than 700 poems and songs about sight loss. That reach is why leading research and clinical institutions invite him in: he emceed the 24th Helen Keller Achievement Awards for the American Foundation for the Blind, opened the National Eye Institute’s Intramural Program retreat at NIH in April 2024 at the invitation of its scientific director, and has been featured by Roche as a change-maker in ophthalmology. The organisational value is different from a typical DEI speaker. Steele does not offer a framework. He offers a specific voice that leaders can put in front of their people when they want an inclusion conversation to stop feeling procedural, supported by active work with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam on how accessibility actually shows up in product and brand. Key speaking topics Disability inclusion and lived experience Sight loss and visual impairment advocacy Resilience after a life-changing diagnosis Accessibility in product, brand and workplace Poetry and storytelling as communication Mental health and identity through chronic illness Patient voice in medical and research settings Ideal for CHRO, DEI and employee experience leaders running disability inclusion or accessibility programmes Healthcare, life sciences, pharmaceutical and ophthalmology audiences (clinicians, researchers and patient-experience teams) wanting an authentic patient voice Awards nights, conference mainstage slots and internal culture events that need a performer as well as a speaker Consumer, tech and retail brands working on accessibility in product and communications Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what a progressive sight loss diagnosis does to work, family and identity A sharper sense of where stated inclusion policies diverge from daily employee experience Specific references from brand and product work with companies like Apple, Meta and OrCam on accessibility in practice Poetry and spoken-word performance that anchors the message in memory long after the event A reframing of disability as an active contribution to an organisation, not a compliance line

Why organisations work with Mark T. Hofmann He has conducted anonymous, scientific interviews with active hackers and uncaught criminals on the darknet, so the attacker psychology in his keynotes is field-sourced, not theorised from headlines. His doctoral research at the University of Tubingen on psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism in hackers gives security and risk leaders a behavioural model for who is targeting them and why. He translates profiling and interrogation methods, the same toolkit used in serious crime work, into practical reading-people skills for negotiation, fraud detection, and executive due diligence. He has been certified as a Crime and Intelligence Analyst by the California Department of Justice and is regularly briefed on by international media including CNN, CBS, Forbes, and 60 Minutes Australia, which gives a buyer confidence the substance survives outside a stage. He covers the dark side of AI, deepfakes, voice cloning, and AI-assisted social engineering, with material that has been pressure-tested against actual perpetrator behaviour rather than vendor marketing. Biography highlights Master of Arts in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, University of Wuppertal. Doctoral candidate at the University of Tubingen, researching dark personality traits among hackers. Certified Crime and Intelligence Analyst, California Department of Justice, 2019. TED speaker, “Profiling Hackers: The Psychology of Cybercrime”. Featured on CNN, CBS, ARD, RTL, Forbes, Business Insider, and 60 Minutes Australia. Lecturer in Behavioral and Cyber Psychology and consultant for Management Circle AG. Biography Most cyberattacks do not begin with code. They begin with a person, a moment of trust, and a message that looked legitimate. The attacker’s craft is psychological before it is technical, and that is the layer most security programmes underinvest in. Mark T. Hofmann works on that layer for a living. A business psychologist trained at the University of Wuppertal and a Certified Crime and Intelligence Analyst credentialed by the California Department of Justice, he conducts anonymous, scientific interviews with active hackers and uncaught criminals to understand motive, method, and the soft signals that make a target. His doctoral work at the University of Tubingen examines psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism among hackers, which gives his stage material a research backbone rather than a headline one. That fieldwork translates directly into the questions a CISO, a CEO, or a head of fraud is wrestling with. How do attackers select targets inside a finance team? What does a deepfake voice request actually exploit in the listener? Why do executives keep authorising wires they should have queried? Hofmann answers those questions with case material drawn from people who do this for a living and were willing to talk. His reach extends beyond security. He teaches profiling and interrogation methods as a practical skillset for negotiation, fraud interviewing, and high-stakes meetings, the same techniques applied to commercial situations. He has been featured on CNN, CBS, Forbes, ARD, RTL, Business Insider, and 60 Minutes Australia, and has delivered a TED talk on profiling hackers. The combination is unusual: a keynote speaker whose primary research subject is the person on the other side of the attack. Key speaking topics Cyber profiling and the psychology of cybercrime Social engineering and the human firewall The dark side of AI, deepfakes, and synthetic identity Profiling in negotiation and high-stakes meetings Reading people, body language, and behavioural signals White-collar crime, psychopathy, and narcissism in organisations Ideal for CISOs, heads of information security, and cyber risk leaders rebuilding the human layer of their defence. CFOs, heads of treasury, and fraud teams exposed to deepfake-driven payment and impersonation attacks. Boards and executive committees that need a non-technical briefing on AI-enabled threat actors. Negotiation, M&A, and procurement leaders who want a practical toolkit for reading counterparties. Audience outcomes A working mental model of who is attacking the organisation, what motivates them, and how they choose targets. Specific behavioural cues that distinguish a manipulative request from a legitimate one in email, voice, and video. A clear view of where deepfakes and AI-generated content are already changing fraud and impersonation risk. Practical profiling and questioning techniques that can be applied in negotiation and internal investigation. A sharper read on dark-personality traits inside leadership pipelines and counterparties.

Why organisations work with Matt Davies He has built positioning work for both regulated giants and founder-led companies, including Nestle, Boots, Specsavers, Virgin, Nikon and Capital One, so the methods have been tested across categories rather than refined inside one. His Brand Strategy Triangle gives executive teams a single shared structure for four arguments they usually have separately: why we exist, who we serve, how we show up, and what we offer. He pushes back hard against generic purpose statements. His “Purpose Fatigue” argument is built for boards tired of green and social washing being mistaken for strategy. He sits inside the practitioner conversation, not above it. Co-hosting the JUST Branding podcast with over 500,000 downloads means the frameworks he brings into a room have been pressure-tested against the working strategists who use them. Operator credibility: he founded, scaled and sold a branding agency, then ran an in-house creative function at Capital One UK. He has been on the buyer’s side of brand work, not only the consultant’s. Biography highlights Author of Storyategy, a six-step process for building a brand strategy on story foundations. Co-host of the JUST Branding Podcast with Jacob Cass; 500,000-plus downloads, guests including Marty Neumeier, David Aaker, Denise Lee Yohn and Chris Do. Named Top 50 UK Advisor by Enterprise Nation in 2019, 2020 and 2021, in the branding and design category. Certified Level C Brand Specialist, Strategist and Architect; Silver Star recipient in the 2020 LEVEL C Metaskills Challenge. Founder of Matt Davies Consultancy Ltd; advisory and fractional roles at Newfound, Motto and ikon. Earlier career: founder of Attitude Design (2008 to 2017, acquired); Creative Department Manager at Capital One UK, where he established the in-house Creative Studio. Biography Most companies do not have a positioning problem. They have a clarity problem. The leadership team cannot agree, in plain language, on the answer to why we exist, who we serve, how we show up and what we sell. Marketing fills the gap with purpose statements that could belong to any competitor in the category. That is the gap Matt Davies works in. His Brand Strategy Triangle reduces a year of internal debate to four questions a board can actually answer in a room together. His book Storyategy sets out the six-step process behind it, built on the argument that a brand is a story an organisation has to live, not a statement it has to write. The credibility comes from having sat in every seat. He founded the branding agency Attitude Design in 2008, ran it for nine years and sold it. He then built and led the in-house Creative Studio inside Capital One UK, learning what brand work looks like inside a regulated business with operational constraints. Today he advises CEOs, CMOs and founders through his consultancy and fractional strategy roles at Newfound, Motto and ikon, with named clients including Nestle, Boots, Specsavers, Virgin, Nikon, Fred Perry and Experian. He also keeps one foot inside the practitioner debate. The JUST Branding podcast he co-hosts with Jacob Cass has passed 500,000 downloads and put him in conversation with Marty Neumeier, David Aaker, Denise Lee Yohn and most of the working canon of brand strategy. Enterprise Nation has named him a UK Top 50 Advisor for three consecutive years in branding and design. Key speaking topics Brand positioning and category differentiation Story-led brand strategy Purpose, meaning and the limits of purpose marketing Customer experience and brand alignment Leadership vision and internal brand Culture and brand as one strategic asset Brand-led growth for founder and scale-up businesses Ideal for CEOs, founders and MDs leading a repositioning, a rebrand, or a category shift CMOs and brand directors are trying to land a single positioning argument across a leadership team Boards and ExCos are tired of generic purpose statements and are looking for a more commercial alternative Marketing and design leaders inside large or regulated organisations who need their work to be understood as strategy, not decoration Audience outcomes A working answer to the four questions of the Brand Strategy Triangle, applied to the audience’s own business A sharper view of where the company’s positioning is generic and where it is genuinely defensible A clearer language for talking about brand inside the leadership team, beyond logos and taglines A practical critique of purpose-driven messaging and a workable alternative built on customer-centric ideas Confidence that brand strategy is a commercial growth tool, not a marketing afterthought

Why organisations work with Mariano Sigman A 2018 Nature Human Behaviour study he co-authored, run with 5,180 live participants, showed that aggregating small structured debates produces sharper answers than the wisdom of thousands; that finding rewrites how senior groups should be designed to decide. He directs the Decision-Making programme of the Human Brain Project, Europe’s flagship neuroscience consortium, and is the only Latin American scientist to hold a directorship in that initiative. His training in physics in Buenos Aires, neuroscience at Rockefeller, and postdoctoral work with Stanislas Dehaene at the College de France gives his claims a methodological grounding that separates them from motivational uses of the same science. “The Secret Life of the Mind”, published by HarperCollins, has been translated into more than a dozen languages and reviewed by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Science Magazine; his ideas hold up outside the speaker circuit. His 2023 book “Artificial”, co-authored with Santiago Bilinkis, gives leadership audiences a calm, scientifically grounded read on what AI changes and does not change in human cognition. Biography highlights PhD in neuroscience from Rockefeller University; postdoctoral research with Stanislas Dehaene at the College de France. Director of the Decision-Making programme of the Human Brain Project; the only Latin American scientist to hold a directorship in that initiative. Associate Professor at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; founder of the Integrative Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Buenos Aires; Principal Researcher at CONICET. Pius XI Medal from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (2016); James S. McDonnell Scholar Award; Human Frontier Science Program Career Development Award. Author of “The Secret Life of the Mind” (HarperCollins, 2017) and “El poder de las palabras” (2022); co-author of “Artificial” with Santiago Bilinkis (2023). TED main-stage speaker on collective intelligence with Dan Ariely. Biography Smart people in a room together do not reliably make smart decisions. Mariano Sigman has spent two decades building the experimental science that explains why, and what to change about it. His laboratory at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella draws on physics, neuroscience, linguistics, and cognitive science to study how individuals and groups actually form judgments under uncertainty. The clearest example is a 2018 paper in Nature Human Behaviour with Joaquin Navajas and colleagues. Working with 5,180 live participants, the team showed that aggregating the consensus of small structured debate groups was substantially more accurate than averaging the opinions of thousands of independent individuals. The architecture of a conversation, in other words, matters more than the number of voices inside it. Sigman trained as a physicist at the University of Buenos Aires, took a PhD in neuroscience at Rockefeller, and did postdoctoral research at the College de France with Stanislas Dehaene, one of the leading figures in cognitive science. He directs the Decision-Making programme of the Human Brain Project, the European flagship initiative, and is the only Latin American scientist to hold a directorship there. “The Secret Life of the Mind”, published by HarperCollins, became an international bestseller and brought his work on judgment, learning, and consciousness to readers in more than a dozen languages. His 2023 book “Artificial”, co-authored with Santiago Bilinkis, applies the same lens to the relationship between human cognition and AI. For boards and executive teams, that body of work answers a specific question. Senior decisions live or die on how a small group aggregates uncertain information. Sigman gives leaders a working account of where that process breaks, why it breaks, and which structural moves close the gap. Key speaking topics Collective intelligence and group decision-making Cognitive bias and judgment under uncertainty The neuroscience of learning and adult neuroplasticity Conversation, language, and belief formation Artificial intelligence and human cognition Consciousness and the science of the mind Creativity and the cognitive roots of innovation Ideal for Boards and executive committees rethinking how high-stakes decisions are deliberated and made CHROs and learning leaders designing capability and judgment programmes for senior talent Strategy, innovation, and transformation leaders working under deep uncertainty Technology and AI leadership teams reasoning about human-machine collaboration Audience outcomes A working account of why structured small-group debate outperforms both lone experts and large consensus meetings. A specific vocabulary for the cognitive distortions that quietly shape leadership judgment, including confidence bias and equality bias. A clearer read on how the adult brain learns and changes, and where common assumptions about learning capacity are wrong. A practical sense of how language and conversation shape belief, memory, and choice inside teams. A grounded view of what AI changes, and does not change, in the cognitive demands placed on senior leaders.

Why organisations work with Ray Stubbs Four decades anchoring live football, darts and snooker on BBC, ESPN, BT Sport and Talksport mean the interviewing reflex is current, not nostalgic. The questions land because the format has been his daily job, not an occasional engagement. He has presented every major international tournament across 1994 to 2008 for BBC Sport, including World Cups, European Championships, the 1998 Winter Olympics and the 1998 Commonwealth Games. That is a rare working knowledge of how big sport actually unfolds for an audience. The football network is real. Years fronting Football Focus alongside Mark Lawrenson and reporting from inside the England camp at Euro 96 and France 98 have left him with the contact book to put credible names on a sports-themed corporate panel. He has presented FA Cup finals on ESPN and the World Seniors Darts Championship most recently, which gives him cross-sport range when the brief is not strictly football. Biography highlights Lead football presenter, ESPN UK, 2009 to 2013, including live coverage of the FA Cup finals Lead reporter, BT Sport, from launch through 2016 Presenter of Football Focus, BBC One, 1999 to 2004, alongside Mark Lawrenson BBC England football reporter from 2007; on-the-ground reporter at Euro 96 and the 1998 FIFA World Cup Co-host of BBC snooker coverage with Hazel Irvine; lead presenter of BBC darts coverage Presenter, World Seniors Darts Championship, 2023 and 2024 Former junior professional footballer at Tranmere Rovers and former Commercial Director of the club Biography Live network sports presenting is one of the most exposed jobs in British broadcasting. Three hours of cup-final coverage, a tournament closing ceremony, a darts final going to a deciding leg, with no autocue and a paying audience in millions. Ray Stubbs has done that job across BBC, ESPN, BT Sport and Talksport for more than forty years. The BBC years were the spine. Stubbs joined BBC Radio Merseyside in 1983, moved to BBC Manchester in 1986, and went on to anchor Football Focus from 1999 to 2004 with Mark Lawrenson. He covered every major international football tournament from the 1994 World Cup in the United States through to Euro 2008, including Euro 96 and France 98 from inside the England camp, and presented the BBC’s darts and snooker output alongside Hazel Irvine. In 2009 he left the BBC for ESPN as lead presenter of the network’s new UK Premier League coverage, fronting the FA Cup finals of 2011, 2012 and 2013. The move to BT Sport at the rebrand made him one of its lead reporters through 2016. Most recently he has presented the World Seniors Darts Championship in 2023 and 2024 and works for Talksport. The reason organisations book him is not access to a thesis; it is access to a presenter who has held network sports rooms together for forty years and has the football, darts and snooker contact book to fill a stage. That is a working broadcaster, not a guest celebrity. Key speaking topics Sports dinner hosting and after-dinner speaking Conference and award-evening chairing Panel moderation with sports figures and executives Live event presentation and Q&A Football, darts and snooker broadcast insight Corporate hospitality hosting Ideal for Sponsor and hospitality dinners around football, darts, snooker and major tournaments Annual corporate award evenings looking for a recognised sports broadcaster as host Sports industry conferences needing a moderator across player, executive and media panels Internal company events with a sports theme or sports-personality lineup Audience outcomes An evening paced with network broadcast timing, on the clock and on the brief Sports-figure panellists drawn out beyond standard interview lines by a peer who has chaired them on TV Anecdote and analysis from inside England camps, World Cup tournaments and FA Cup finals A host the audience already knows from BBC, ESPN and BT Sport, which raises the perceived weight of the agenda

Why organisations work with Dino Sofos He has built category-leading shows in two different genres, launching Dua Lipa’s At Your Service as Persephonica’s first title and co-creating The News Agents, which hit 24 million downloads in seven months. He ran BBC News Podcasts for long enough to learn what works at scale: 85 million downloads across Brexitcast, Americast and Newscast during his tenure as editor. He understands the commercial crossover between audio and broadcast, having been the first editor to transfer a current affairs podcast, Brexitcast, onto BBC One in 2019. He speaks from operator experience, not commentary, which makes him useful to executives weighing real decisions about content, talent and audience strategy. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Persephonica, an independent audio production company established in 2021. Former Editor of BBC News Podcasts, with 14 years at the BBC. Creator of Brexitcast, Americast and Newscast for the BBC. Brexitcast won the Listeners’ Choice award at the British Podcast Awards 2019. Co-creator of The News Agents with Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall, produced in partnership with Global. Producer of Dua Lipa: At Your Service, featuring guests including Elton John, Amal Clooney and Pedro Almodovar. Biography Brexitcast started inside the BBC as an experiment in how political reporters talked to each other when the cameras were off. Dino Sofos was the editor who turned that informal energy into a format, then into a habit, then onto BBC One in 2019, the first time a current affairs podcast had crossed over to television. That move, and the 85 million downloads accumulated by BBC News Podcasts during his editorship, gave him a specific kind of knowledge. He understands how audio formats work commercially, how much of audience loyalty is structural rather than topical, and why most attempts to manufacture habit fail in the first six weeks. He left the BBC in 2021 to found Persephonica. The company launched with Dua Lipa’s At Your Service, featuring guests from Elton John to Pedro Almodovar, and followed with The News Agents, co-created with Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall in partnership with Global. The News Agents became the UK’s most downloaded daily news podcast, reaching 24 million downloads in seven months. For organisations trying to build their own audience, his value is less about podcasting as a channel and more about the operating discipline behind it: choosing the right voices, designing formats that reward return listening, and running the commercial side of attention without losing the editorial instinct that attracted people in the first place. Key speaking topics Podcasting and digital audio strategy Building loyal audiences at scale Creative entrepreneurship and independent production Talent identification and format design Editorial innovation in news and current affairs Commercial models for original content Ideal for CMOs and communications directors weighing investment in owned audio and content formats Media, publishing and broadcasting leaders considering how to adapt for a podcast-first audience Founders and heads of content designing subscriber or listener strategies HR and internal comms leaders looking at audio for employee engagement and leadership storytelling Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what separates shows that build habit from content that merely accumulates views. Practical reference points from launching chart-topping podcasts in both celebrity and news formats. Specific lessons from editorial formats such as Brexitcast, Americast and The News Agents on pairing talent with structure. A working view of the commercial and talent economics of independent production.

Why organisations work with Speech Thomas His B.R.A.V.E. framework (Bold, Resilient, Adaptable, Vulnerable, Encouraging) is proprietary, named IP built from firsthand experience navigating commercial failure, personal loss, and creative reinvention across a multi-decade career, not a theoretical model adapted from management literature He integrates live musical performance structurally into the keynote itself, creating a shared emotional experience that makes the framework’s principles felt rather than simply heard – a format no other leadership speaker with equivalent platform credibility replicates The vulnerability pillar of B.R.A.V.E. carries specific weight: his origin story involves growing up in statistically one of the most difficult environments for Black youth in America and losing both his grandmother and brother in the same week; circumstances that directly shaped the framework’s architecture His 16 Bars documentary – in which he led a songwriting and recording collaboration inside a Virginia jail – provides independently verified, third-party evidence that his approach to creativity and leadership character works in conditions far more demanding than any corporate conference room The Dr. Terence N. Thomas Scholarship, a 501(c)3 he established in 1992, has directed over $1M in educational stipends to students from underserved communities – demonstrating that the «encouraging» principle of B.R.A.V.E. is operational, not rhetorical Biography highlights Founder, lead vocalist and producer of Arrested Development; two-time Grammy winner: Best New Artist and Best Rap Performance (1993) Arrested Development’s debut album 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of… achieved multi-platinum certification in the United States «Tennessee» named one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s «500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll» Solo single «Like Marvin Gaye Said» held #1 on Japan’s Tokio 100 chart for seven consecutive weeks; solo album Spiritual People certified Gold by the RIAJ Producer and collaborator on 16 Bars (2018), an award-winning documentary following a music rehabilitation programme inside Richmond City Jail — winner of Best Documentary at the Downtown L.A. Film Festival Creator of the B.R.A.V.E. leadership framework, now delivered as a keynote at corporate, association and government conferences globally Founder of the Dr. Terence N. Thomas Scholarship (501(c)3, est. 1992), which has provided over $1M in stipends to university students from at-risk communities across three decades Biography The qualities most organisations say they want from their leaders – courage under pressure, the ability to adapt without losing direction, the willingness to be honest when honesty is costly – are precisely the ones that conventional leadership development struggles to instil. Why? Because they cannot be taught from a slide deck. They are formed through experience, reinforced through narrative, and transmitted most effectively when the person articulating them has actually lived them. Speech Thomas built his B.R.A.V.E. framework (Bold, Resilient, Adaptable, Vulnerable, Encouraging) from a career that required each of those qualities under genuine pressure. As the founder and lead vocalist of Arrested Development, he led a group that achieved two Grammy Awards and multi-platinum sales for a debut album that ran directly against the dominant commercial trends of its era. When the group disbanded, he rebuilt independently, building a substantial solo career across five albums and finding his largest audience in Japan – territory he entered without the infrastructure that had supported the group’s earlier success. What distinguishes his keynote from the standard musical-career-as-leadership-metaphor format is that the framework is specific and teachable, and the performance is structural rather than decorative. Speech integrates live music into the keynote itself because the argument he is making – that vulnerability and creative courage are leadership competencies, not personality traits – is demonstrated more effectively through song than through slides. His 16 Bars documentary, in which he led a songwriting and recording programme inside Richmond City Jail, provides third-party evidence that this methodology produces results in conditions that test it genuinely. The Dr. Terence N. Thomas Scholarship, which he established in 1992 following his brother’s death and which has since distributed over $1M to students from underserved communities, is where the «encouraging» pillar of B.R.A.V.E. becomes most legible. For boards and senior leadership teams evaluating whether a speaker’s values are substantive or performative, it is a credible and verifiable answer. Key speaking topics B.R.A.V.E. leadership framework Leadership character development Creativity and the artistic process as organisational tools Storytelling and voice in leadership communication Resilience and adaptability under pressure Music, culture and social impact Criminal justice reform and rehabilitation through creative practice Ideal for Senior leadership and executive teams exploring the relationship between character, culture and organisational performance CHROs and talent development leaders building leadership pipeline programmes that go beyond technical capability Conferences in creative industries, media, entertainment and arts sectors DEI and culture transformation events requiring a speaker whose credibility is built from lived experience rather than consultancy Audience outcomes A named, five-part leadership framework (B.R.A.V.E.) that individuals can apply to their own professional context A reframe of vulnerability from personal risk to leadership asset – with a credible, tested example of why it matters Practical perspective on how storytelling and creative expression function as tools for communication, not just culture A more concrete understanding of what distinguishes leadership under pressure from leadership in comfortable conditions Where a live performance element is included: a shared emotional experience that anchors the session’s themes in a way that participants recall and reference beyond the event itself