Storytelling & Business Communication

Why organisations work with Dominic Sandbrook Reach and recognition that few historians can match. The Rest is History, the podcast he co-hosts with Tom Holland, was named Apple Podcasts’ 2025 Global Show of the Year, the first UK-based show to take the award. A serious academic record behind the public profile: Oxford, St Andrews, Cambridge, a Sara Norton Prize PhD, a visiting professorship at King’s College London and a fellowship of the Royal Historical Society. A specific body of work on Britain since 1945, five volumes from Never Had It So Good to Who Dares Wins, that gives him an unusually deep evidence base for parallels between the post-war decades and the disruptions leaders are now navigating. Storytelling craft developed across BBC Two documentary series, a national newspaper column and one of the world’s most-listened-to podcasts. He briefs senior audiences without lecturing them. Biography highlights Co-host of The Rest is History with Tom Holland; Apple Podcasts’ 2025 Global Show of the Year. Visiting Professor at King’s College London; Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; trustee of the National Archives Trust. Author of five volumes on post-war Britain: Never Had It So Good, White Heat, State of Emergency, Seasons in the Sun, Who Dares Wins. Earlier US-history work: Eugene McCarthy and Mad as Hell, on American politics and the 1970s. Writer-presenter of BBC Two series The 70s, The 80s, Tomorrow’s Worlds, Strange Days: Cold War Britain, Let Us Entertain You, and Das Auto. Columnist for the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times. Nominated Critic of the Year (National Press Awards, 2018) and Comment Journalist of the Year (British Journalism Awards, 2021). Biography Britain since 1945 has lived through repeated cycles of inflation, energy crisis, industrial conflict, technological upheaval and political realignment. Dominic Sandbrook has spent two decades writing the definitive popular history of those decades, in five volumes running from Never Had It So Good to Who Dares Wins. That work gives senior audiences something rare: a careful, evidence-based account of how earlier generations of leaders, governments and companies handled the conditions that today’s executives often describe as unprecedented. The academic foundation is serious. Balliol College, Oxford for an undergraduate degree in history and French; an MLitt at St Andrews; a Sara Norton Prize PhD at Jesus College, Cambridge that became his first book, a biography of Senator Eugene McCarthy. A lectureship at Sheffield and a senior fellowship at Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute followed. Since 2012 he has been a Visiting Professor at King’s College London, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a trustee of the National Archives Trust. What sets his work apart is the public reach. Since 2020, Sandbrook and his co-host Tom Holland have built The Rest is History into the world’s most listened-to history podcast, named Apple Podcasts’ 2025 Global Show of the Year. He writes columns for the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times, with award nominations from the National Press Awards and the British Journalism Awards, and he has written and presented major BBC Two series on the 1970s, the 1980s, Cold War Britain and the cultural history of science fiction. For a board or leadership audience, the appeal is the combination of scholarly authority and broadcast craft. Sandbrook makes the post-war record useable: how Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher and the country around them dealt with strikes, currency crises, energy shocks and rapid technological change, and what those episodes reveal about how senior decisions actually get made under pressure. He briefs the room without moralising or romanticising the past. Key speaking topics Post-war British political and economic history The 1970s and 1980s as a leadership case study Cold War culture, politics and global influence Historical parallels for present-day disruption Storytelling and narrative craft for senior communicators American politics and society in the post-war era Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning a long-view perspective on current economic and political volatility Annual partner conferences, leadership offsites and after-dinner events that want intellectual heft alongside broadcast-grade delivery Communications, public affairs and corporate-narrative teams interested in how serious storytelling holds an audience Member organisations and trade bodies marking anniversaries or commemorating institutional history Audience outcomes A sharper sense of how earlier decades of British and Western history rhyme with present conditions, and where they do not Specific case material on how political and business leaders handled inflation, industrial disputes, energy crises and technological change A more confident vocabulary for putting current events into historical perspective when briefing teams, clients or stakeholders A reminder of how narrative authority is built: through evidence, character and pace rather than slogans

Why organisations work with Rich Mulholland He runs a working AI agency, Too Many Robots, alongside a presentation business, so the advice on staying relevant in an AI-saturated market comes from someone deploying the tools, not commenting on them. Legacide gives him a precise argument that flips the standard innovation conversation: the constraint is not new ideas, it is the old behaviour that keeps surviving every restructure. Here Be Dragons codifies “storyselling” as a discipline for commercial teams, useful for sales leaders trying to move buyers without resorting to feature lists or discounting. Missing Link has shaped the presentation craft of corporate leaders across South Africa and beyond for over two decades, which means he speaks to senior executives about communication as someone who has trained the room rather than just spoken in it. Biography highlights Founder of Missing Link, described by multiple sources as South Africa’s largest presentation and communication training firm. Founder of Too Many Robots, an AI agency advising clients on practical AI deployment. Co-founder of 21Tanks, a problem-identification consultancy positioned as South Africa’s first perspective lab. Author of four books: Legacide, Boredom Slayer, Here Be Dragons, and Relentless Relevance. Guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and the Gordon Institute of Business Science. TEDx speaker at TEDxJohannesburg and TEDxCapeTown; has delivered keynotes in 50 countries across six continents. Biography Innovation programmes rarely fail at the idea stage. They fail at the legacy stage, where the existing way of doing things absorbs the new initiative and digests it back into business as usual. This is the territory Rich Mulholland has spent two decades working in, first through Missing Link, the South African presentation and communication firm he founded, and then through the writing that made Legacide a reference point for executives trying to understand why their change programmes keep stalling. His thesis is direct. Innovation does not happen when an organisation starts doing something new. It happens when it stops doing something old. That distinction reframes the senior team’s job from generating ideas to clearing space, and it is the spine that connects his work across innovation, sales, and communication. In Here Be Dragons he applies the same logic to commercial teams, treating storytelling not as a soft skill but as the operating discipline that decides whether a deal moves. The AI dimension is the more recent layer. Through Too Many Robots, the agency he founded to help clients deploy AI tactically rather than rhetorically, Mulholland has been working inside the question that most boards are still asking from the outside: what remains a human advantage when expectation, attention, and execution can all be automated. His answer, set out in the Humanity’s Unfair Advantage keynote, is that relevance is the perpetual play, not a position you achieve once. He is a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and at GIBS, has spoken in 50 countries across six continents, and has appeared on TEDx stages including TEDxJohannesburg and TEDxCapeTown. Before any of this he was a touring roadie running lights for Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, and Bon Jovi, which is where the obsession with what makes a room respond actually started. Key speaking topics Relentless relevance and the discipline of staying useful to customers Legacy thinking as the silent constraint on innovation Storyselling and persuasion for commercial teams Humanity’s unfair advantage in an AI-driven market Leadership communication and executive presence Strategy for autonomous and purpose-driven organisations Ideal for Chief commercial officers, chief revenue officers, and sales leadership audiences working on storytelling and buyer persuasion Innovation leads, transformation heads, and strategy teams trying to dismantle legacy behaviour rather than add new initiatives Executive communicators and senior leaders preparing for high-stakes platforms, investor days, and town halls Boards and leadership teams scoping where AI substitutes human work and where human relevance still holds Audience outcomes A working definition of what legacy thinking looks like inside their own organisation, and where it is absorbing innovation effort A sharper framing for sales and commercial narratives that moves beyond feature lists into customer-centred story A clearer view of which parts of their work AI will eat and which parts depend on human relevance A practical standard for what a senior executive presentation should do, drawn from someone who has trained presenters for two decades

Why organisations work with Paolo Petrocelli He runs a flagship cultural institution and can speak to the operating discipline behind cultural ambition, not the slogan version. His work in cultural diplomacy is recognised by named bodies that buyers respect: the World Economic Forum, the Italian Republic, the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, UNESCO. He bridges Europe and the Gulf at a moment when both regions are rewriting their cultural and economic positioning, and he has executive experience inside that bridge. He is a credible voice on how youth, talent, and creative capital flow internationally, with a track record of building institutions that move those flows in practice. Biography highlights Head of Dubai Opera since 2023. Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum, Class of 2023. Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. Founder and President of EMMA for Peace; co-founder of Opera for Peace. PhD, IULM Milan; Executive MBA, SDA Bocconi; Oxford Executive Leadership Programme, Said Business School. Author of The Evolution of Opera Theatre in the Middle East and North Africa, Cambridge Scholars Publishing; research affiliate at metaLAB at Harvard; Forbes contributor and TEDx speaker. Biography Dubai Opera is the kind of asset a city builds when it wants to be taken seriously on the international stage. Running it is closer to running an embassy than running a theatre. The person commissioning a season is making decisions about national positioning, talent attraction, and the symbolic capital of a place. Petrocelli took over the institution in 2023, after building EMMA for Peace into one of the better-known music-diplomacy platforms operating between Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader the same year. His earlier book on the evolution of opera theatres in the MENA region, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, is one of the few serious surveys of cultural infrastructure across a region now investing heavily in it. The credential set is unusual. A PhD in cultural economics from IULM Milan and an Executive MBA from SDA Bocconi sit alongside an Oxford Executive Leadership certificate from Said Business School and a research affiliation at metaLAB at Harvard. He has held cultural diplomacy roles for the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates and within UNESCO-aligned youth structures. The Italian state has knighted him in the Order of Merit. What makes him commercially distinctive is the combination of operating responsibility and diplomatic standing. Most cultural strategists write about soft power from outside it. He runs one of its more visible instruments while sitting on the platforms that shape policy around it. Key speaking topics Cultural diplomacy and soft power Leadership of mission-driven cultural institutions Culture, creative industries and global development The Gulf, Europe and the new geography of cultural capital Music and the arts in international relations Youth, talent and the future of cultural leadership Cultural strategy for nations, cities and corporates Ideal for Government and city leaders working on cultural positioning, place branding, or soft-power strategy Boards and CEOs of foundations, sponsors, and corporates with serious cultural portfolios Heads of public affairs, communications, and brand who treat culture as strategy rather than sponsorship Senior leaders in international organisations and diplomatic services working on cultural cooperation Audience outcomes A clearer view of why culture has become a strategic asset for nations, cities and major brands A working sense of how cultural institutions actually run, and where ambition fails in execution Specific examples of soft power and music diplomacy as instruments of international standing A read on where the centre of gravity in global culture is shifting, and what it means for talent, capital, and policy

Why organisations work with Martin Brooks He has taught body language to leaders at Henley Business School, London Business School and Judge Business School, giving the content a teaching-grade structure that most communication coaches lack. His sales-leadership background means the work lands with commercial audiences who tend to dismiss communication coaching as soft skills. His Body Language Decoder gives delegates a reference artefact that travels back into the business after the session, not just a one-day boost. Broadcasters book him to analyse political and corporate figures live on air (BBC2, LBC, Discovery, The Times), which is a useful proxy for how quickly he can read a room. Clients including IBM, PwC, KPMG, Procter & Gamble and the Financial Times have used him for executive coaching, pitch preparation, and leadership development. Biography highlights Author of Body Language Decoder (Laurence King / Hachette, 2021). Teaches “Body Language for Leaders” at Henley Business School. Course Director at the Chartered Institute of Marketing since 2008. Founder of his communications consultancy in 2002, after a career in sales and sales leadership. Media commentator on body language for BBC Radio, LBC, BBC2 election coverage, Discovery Channel and The Times. Clients include IBM, PwC, KPMG, Procter & Gamble and the Financial Times. Biography Most leaders prepare what they will say in a high-stakes meeting and almost nothing about how they will appear while saying it. The asymmetry shows. Boards, investors and senior peers form judgements on credibility within seconds, and the data they use is mostly nonverbal. Martin Brooks works in that gap. He has run his own communication consultancy since 2002, after a career in sales and sales leadership where the cost of looking uncertain in front of a buyer was immediate and personal. That commercial origin shapes how he teaches. The work is not theatre training and not motivational, it is operator instruction on what hands, eyes, voice, and posture are doing while a leader argues a point. The teaching has institutional weight behind it. Brooks delivers “Body Language for Leaders” at Henley Business School and has taught at London Business School and Judge Business School. He has been a Course Director at the Chartered Institute of Marketing since 2008. His Body Language Decoder, published in 2021 by Laurence King, sits as a 50-card field reference that delegates use after the session. Broadcasters use him as the in-studio analyst for politicians and corporate leaders under pressure. He provided live analysis on Discovery Channel of Mark Zuckerberg’s US Senate testimony, has covered UK general elections on BBC2, and contributes to BBC Radio, LBC and The Times. For a senior buyer, that body of live, on-record reading is the best available evidence that what he teaches in the room actually works under fire. Key speaking topics Body language for senior leaders Executive presence and credibility on stage Nonverbal communication in high-stakes meetings Pitch and presentation coaching Reading political and business figures in real time Ideal for Executive committees and senior leadership teams preparing for investor, board or town-hall communication CEOs and C-suite leaders stepping into more public-facing roles Sales leadership and pitch teams running competitive bids Leadership development and high-potential programmes Audience outcomes A vocabulary for what their own body is signalling while they speak The ability to read confidence, hesitation and disagreement in a room before words confirm it Concrete adjustments to posture, gesture and eye contact that they can use the same week A reference artefact (the Body Language Decoder cards) for ongoing use post-session Sharper judgement on how political and corporate figures are performing under pressure

Why organisations work with Eleanor Mills She has built the most detailed evidence base in the UK on ABC1 women aged 45 to 60, including partnership research with HSBC on midlife female entrepreneurs and with Accenture on the economic power of women over 45. She names a category most boardrooms still treat as a footnote, the “Queenager”, and gives employers and brands a working vocabulary for talent retention, marketing strategy and product design aimed at this group. She has 22 years of editorial authority at The Sunday Times, including running the magazine when it won Supplement of the Year at the 2018 Press Awards, which gives her communications work with senior leaders genuine craft behind it. Her book, Much More to Come (HarperCollins, 2024), turns midlife transition into a leadership story about reinvention after redundancy, divorce and caring responsibilities, the same pressures organisations are failing to design around. She convenes a 50,000-strong community at Noon, which means her insight is continually refreshed by the audience itself, not drawn from a one-off study. Biography highlights Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Noon (noon.org.uk), launched 8 March 2021. Former Editorial Director of The Sunday Times and Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine, 1998 to 2020. Chair of Women in Journalism, 2013 to 2021. Author of Much More to Come (HarperCollins, 2024), a Sunday Times bestseller; co-editor of Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs (2005). Recipient of the International Alliance for Women World of Difference Award (2012); editor of the Press Awards Supplement of the Year (2018). Research partnerships with HSBC (Fearless and Thriving) and Accenture (The Rise of the Queenager). Biography The most economically active female demographic in Britain is also the one most likely to leave senior roles before reaching the top. Women aged 45 to 60 hold disposable income, household decision-making power and decades of operating experience, yet employers and consumer brands consistently underestimate both their commercial weight and their willingness to stay. This is the gap Eleanor Mills has spent the last five years documenting. After 22 years at Times Newspapers, including running The Sunday Times Magazine when it won Supplement of the Year at the 2018 Press Awards, she left in March 2020 and founded Noon on International Women’s Day 2021. Noon is now a 50,000-strong community and a research platform, with partnership studies for HSBC on midlife female entrepreneurs and Accenture on the economic power of women over 45. Her book Much More to Come (HarperCollins, 2024) extends that argument into the territory of reinvention. It draws on her own redundancy and the pressures her readers describe: menopause, divorce, empty nests, caring for elderly parents, second careers. The book reframes midlife as a productive stage organisations should design around, not write off. For a senior buyer, the value is precise. She gives a board the vocabulary, the data and the editorial sharpness to act on a workforce and consumer segment most strategy decks treat as a rounding error. Key speaking topics Women in midlife as a talent and consumer category Retention of senior women through menopause and caring years Reinvention after redundancy and career disruption Marketing and brand strategy for women over 45 Personal storytelling in leadership communication Resilience in transition Ideal for CHROs and talent leaders designing retention strategies for senior women CMOs and brand leaders targeting the over-45 female consumer Boards reviewing DEI and culture beyond entry and mid-career pipelines Leadership programmes for women navigating career and life transitions in their forties and fifties Audience outcomes A working definition of the Queenager category and what makes it commercially distinct Specific intervention points where organisations lose senior women, and what changes the curve Evidence drawn from named partnership research with HSBC and Accenture, not generic DEI argument A reframing of midlife transition as a leadership and reinvention story rather than a wellness theme

Why organisations work with Dhar Mann He has done what most CMOs are still trying to do: build a content engine that earns ten billion views a year without buying media, and is willing to explain the mechanics behind it. He is one of two entrepreneurs ever ranked #2 on Forbes’ Top Creators list two years running, and he runs it from a 125,000 sq ft Los Angeles studio with a full production staff. Buyers get a working operator, not a personal brand. He was named to the inaugural TIME100 Creators list and dubbed the “Moral Philosopher of YouTube” by The New York Times, which makes him uniquely credible on values-led content as a commercial strategy, not as a CSR talking point. He scaled LiveGlam from $600 of starting capital to eight-figure subscription revenue before founding the studio, which means his commentary on customer acquisition and creator-led growth comes from two successful builds, not one. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Dhar Mann Studios; the world’s #1 digital scripted creator, with more than 140 million followers and over 10 billion annual views across platforms. Named to the inaugural TIME100 Creators list, 2025. Ranked #2 on Forbes’ Top Creators list in 2024 and 2025. Three-time Telly Award winner; Shorty Award for Best YouTube Presence; multiple Kids’ Choice Awards nominations for Favourite Male Creator. Founder of LiveGlam, the cruelty-free cosmetics subscription business he grew from $600 to eight-figure annual revenue. Confirmed 2026 keynote at NATPE Global and the Realscreen Summit, Miami, alongside Dhar Mann Studios CEO and former MTV president Sean Atkins. Biography The creator economy is now worth more than $250 billion, and most large organisations are still trying to work out how to participate in it without losing their brand to it. Dhar Mann Studios is one of the clearest answers in market. From a 125,000 sq ft production base in Los Angeles, the company publishes scripted shorts that have generated over 10 billion views a year and a following of more than 140 million people, built without traditional media spend. The studio model is what distinguishes the proposition. Dhar Mann is the founder and CEO, but the business is run as a vertically integrated production house, with a full writers’ room, actors, post-production and distribution discipline. The New York Times called him the “Moral Philosopher of YouTube” for the values-led structure of the content; Forbes ranked him #2 on its Top Creators list in both 2024 and 2025; TIME named him to the inaugural TIME100 Creators list in 2025. The relevant point for organisations is that values, in his work, are an operating choice that drives retention and reach, not a brand veneer. Before the studio, he founded LiveGlam, a cruelty-free cosmetics subscription business he grew from $600 of starting capital to eight-figure annual revenue, an early proof that he can build a customer-acquisition engine inside a category he did not previously operate in. The same instinct, treating storytelling and community as the primary product, has carried into partnerships with MTV, Amazon, Universal and Instagram, and into a confirmed 2026 keynote at NATPE Global and the Realscreen Summit, where the brief is the convergence of creator economics and traditional media. For senior commercial leaders, the value sits in three places: how to think about content as a customer asset, how to structure a studio rather than a campaign function, and how to use values-led narrative as a loyalty mechanism in categories where awareness no longer converts. Key speaking topics Purpose-driven storytelling and brand loyalty The creator economy and the studio model Building customer acquisition at scale Entrepreneurship and category entry Empathy and values as commercial strategy Culture inside fast-scaling creative businesses Ideal for CMOs and brand leadership teams rebuilding their content function Founders and CEOs scaling consumer or subscription businesses Innovation, marketing and customer experience teams looking to act on creator economics Media, entertainment and platform organisations navigating the convergence with creators Audience outcomes A working view of how a scripted-content studio earns ten billion views a year, and which parts of that model port into a corporate brand function A specific take on values-led content as a commercial choice, with the loyalty and retention evidence to back it up The operating logic behind taking a business from a few hundred dollars to eight-figure revenue inside a new category A clearer read on where the creator economy and traditional media are actually converging, and what that means for marketing spend

Why organisations work with Mickey Wilson She runs a working brand consultancy, not a speaking practice with an agency name attached. The frameworks she presents are the same ones Firestarter applies inside Tesco, Samsung, CIMA and Ocado engagements. The DARE Formula gives leadership teams a shared vocabulary for brand decisions: Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, Expression. It replaces the design-led conversation most boards default to with a commercial one. She works the B2B scale-up problem specifically. The advice is calibrated to founders who have product-market fit and need brand to do the next stage of commercial lifting, not to consumer giants polishing an existing position. Paired with co-founder Dr Chris Endersby, a business psychologist, she brings behavioural insight into brand decisions where most agencies bring only aesthetic judgement. Biography highlights CEO and founder, Firestarter (est. 2015), a London-headquartered brand consultancy with a studio in Cape Town 30+ years in brand strategy and creative leadership; launched her first agency at twenty-one Client engagements include Tesco, Samsung, CIMA and Ocado Creator of the DARE Formula and Firestarter’s Brand Maturity Model Co-author of forthcoming book BRANDFIRE with Dr Chris Endersby Featured in Authority Magazine, Startups Magazine, BMmagazine, WeAreTheCity and Talented Ladies Club Biography Most B2B scale-ups treat brand as a downstream problem. They build the product, win early customers, then commission a logo refresh when sales plateau. Mickey Wilson’s argument is that the plateau is the brand problem, and that treating it cosmetically is what causes it to harden. Firestarter, the consultancy she founded in 2015, sells against that pattern. Working with clients including Tesco, Samsung, CIMA and Ocado, the firm built a proprietary framework, the DARE Formula, around four ingredients its analysts argue brand-led growth depends on: Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance and Expression. It is the spine of how the firm diagnoses why a B2B business is not converting at the rate its product would predict. What separates her work from generic brand consultancy is the partnership with co-founder Dr Chris Endersby, a business psychologist whose background sits in behavioural change rather than design. Together they pair brand strategy with cognitive insight into why buyers respond, hesitate, or commit. That joint authorship runs through Firestarter’s BrandSight:360 assessment and through BRANDFIRE, the book the two are preparing for publication. Wilson started her first agency at twenty-one and has spent more than three decades in brand strategy and creative leadership. The corporate client list is the credential most senior buyers will check first. The more telling proof is that scale-up founders, who tend to be sceptical of agency theatre, hire her to turn brand from a marketing line item into a commercial growth lever. Key speaking topics B2B brand strategy Differentiation in saturated markets Brand-led growth for scale-ups The DARE Formula Behavioural psychology in branding Brand resonance and emotional connection Founder-led brand building Ideal for Founders and CEOs of B2B scale-ups in series A through C CMOs and brand directors at mid-market businesses Sales and marketing leadership teams aligning on positioning Industry conferences in B2B technology, professional services and SaaS Audience outcomes A diagnostic for where their brand is losing commercial ground to competitors The DARE Formula as a working vocabulary for cross-functional brand decisions A clearer view of how psychology shapes B2B buyer commitment Practical pointers on translating founder conviction into a brand position buyers remember A challenge to the assumption that brand is a marketing function rather than a commercial one

Why organisations work with Rohit Bhargava He brings a decade of annual trend research, distilled into the Non-Obvious and Megatrends book series, into a board or strategy off-site as a working method, not a slide deck. The SIFT framework gives marketing, innovation and strategy teams a shared language for separating durable shifts from passing noise, which most trend keynotes leave unresolved. His client list (NASA, Disney, World Bank, Intel, American Express) signals a track record with organisations that have to make capital decisions on long horizons, not just generate quarterly campaigns. Beyond Diversity, co-authored with Jennifer Brown, gives him a credible second register on inclusion as a commercial and cultural question, useful when a single keynote needs to cover both growth strategy and people. He works as a trained marketer (15 years at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett), which means innovation and trend content lands with sales, brand and customer leaders rather than staying at the level of abstract foresight. Biography highlights 3-time Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of ten books, including #1 WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends. Adjunct professor of marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University. Co-founder of Ideapress Publishing and founder of the Non-Obvious Company. Co-author of Beyond Diversity with Jennifer Brown (Simon & Schuster / Ideapress); WSJ bestseller. Keynote and workshop work for NASA, Disney, Intel, American Express, World Bank, Coca-Cola, Microsoft. Featured speaker at five SXSW events; keynote at SXSW Sydney 2023, the first SXSW outside the United States. Biography Trend forecasting is crowded. Most of what circulates inside large organisations is a recycled version of the same six themes: AI, sustainability, hybrid work, generational change, geopolitics, the consumer. The harder question for a senior team is which of those headlines actually changes how they should allocate capital next year, and which signals further out are not yet on anyone’s deck. That gap is the work Rohit Bhargava has built a decade-long research practice around. His Non-Obvious book series, published annually from 2015 and culminating in the WSJ and USA Today #1 bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends in 2020, reached more than a million readers. The follow-up, The Future Normal, co-authored with Henry Coutinho-Mason and launched at SXSW in 2023, covers thirty shifts shaping the next decade, from generative AI to biophilic design. The 2024 book Non-Obvious Thinking, written with Ben duPont, formalises the SIFT method, a four-step habit for curating ideas that audiences can take into their own teams. Before becoming a full-time author and speaker, Bhargava spent 15 years in brand strategy roles at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett, advising consumer brands on behaviour and storytelling. He teaches marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University as an adjunct professor, and writes a monthly column for Inc. on books that matter. With Jennifer Brown he co-authored Beyond Diversity, a Wall Street Journal bestseller published by Simon & Schuster and Ideapress, which examines inclusion across twelve domains including workplace, leadership and technology. The client list, NASA, Disney, the World Bank, Intel, American Express, Microsoft, signals where the work lands hardest: organisations that need to translate cultural and technological signals into product, capital and brand decisions on multi-year horizons. The point is not to predict the future but to teach a working team to spot it earlier than the competition. Key speaking topics Trend forecasting and the non-obvious method Innovation as a research discipline Marketing and brand in low-trust markets AI and the future of trust The Future Normal: thirty shifts reshaping commerce Inclusive growth and Beyond Diversity Storytelling for senior leaders Creative thinking and curation as a managed habit Ideal for Chief marketing officers, brand teams and customer experience leads navigating attention and trust in saturated markets Chief strategy officers, innovation leads and corporate development teams setting multi-year direction Boards and executive committees commissioning a sharper view of how cultural and technological shifts will hit their category Sales and partner kickoffs where a strategy team wants a working method, not a trend slide Audience outcomes A working knowledge of the SIFT method and how to use it inside a team A named set of cultural and commercial shifts that are relevant to the audience’s specific industry, not generic trend lists A shared vocabulary for separating durable signals from passing noise Practical examples of how organisations including NASA, Disney and World Bank have translated trend research into operating decisions Confidence that trend work can be a repeatable internal habit, not a one-off external report

Why organisations work with Karen Eber She has run culture and learning inside two of the largest professional environments in the world, GE and Deloitte, so her storytelling work is built around how decisions actually get made in a 90,000-person organisation. Her Perfect Story method is grounded in neuroscience, including how attention, empathy, and trust are formed in the brain during a story, giving leaders a defensible reason to invest in communication craft beyond presentation polish. She works fluently across storytelling for leadership, storytelling for change, and storytelling with data, which means a single engagement can serve a town hall, a board update, and a sales conversation. Her book carries genuine third-party validation: Axiom Business Book Award Silver Medal, International Book Awards winner, and Next Big Ideas Club selection, signalling editorial quality rather than self-published reach. Biography highlights Author of The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories that Inform, Influence, and Inspire, HarperCollins Leadership / Harper Horizon. TED speaker: “How your brain responds to stories, and why they’re crucial for leaders”. Former Head of Culture and Head of Leadership Development at General Electric. Former Chief Learning Officer / Head of Leadership Development at Deloitte. Guest lecturer at London Business School, MIT, and Stanford. Featured in Fast Company, Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur, NPR, CNBC, Quartz, and Business Insider. Biography Most internal communication inside large organisations is information transfer in slide form. Strategy is announced, change is rolled out, performance is reported, and almost none of it changes how a manager behaves on a Tuesday morning. Karen Eber’s work begins from that problem. She spent two decades inside the kind of environment where this matters most. At General Electric she led Culture and Leadership Development across a global workforce. At Deloitte she ran leadership development for the firm. Those roles required her to land complex messages, on diverse audiences, in cultures that were already crowded with corporate noise. Her book The Perfect Story sets out a practical neuroscience-based method for how leaders find, shape, and deliver stories that hold attention and shift behaviour. It has been recognised with an Axiom Business Book Award Silver Medal, an International Book Awards win, and a Next Big Ideas Club “Must-Read” selection. Her TED talk on the neuroscience of leadership storytelling extended the argument to a public audience. What buyers tend to remember from her sessions is that the craft is teachable. She separates storytelling from charisma, breaks down the brain mechanics of attention and trust, and gives senior people specific tools they can use the same week, whether the audience is a board, a sales team, or a hundred frontline managers reading a town hall transcript on a phone. Key speaking topics Storytelling for leadership and influence Storytelling with data Culture change and communication Executive presence and communication craft Neuroscience of attention, trust, and persuasion Employee engagement and internal communication Ideal for CHROs, Chief Learning Officers, and Heads of Leadership Development designing executive communication and culture programmes. Chief Communications Officers and internal communication leaders responsible for change narratives and town hall content. Sales and marketing leadership teams who need to convert data into narrative buyers act on. Senior leadership teams preparing for major strategy, restructure, or integration announcements. Audience outcomes A working neuroscience-based model for how stories hold attention and create trust. Specific techniques for turning data and strategy slides into narratives that move an audience. A clearer separation between what is rhetoric, what is communication craft, and what is leadership behaviour. Tools senior leaders can apply immediately to town halls, board updates, and customer conversations.

Why organisations work with Lucy Cooke She brings primary-source evolutionary biology into leadership conversations that usually run on management frameworks, giving senior teams a different evidence base for talking about dominance, hierarchy and cooperation. Her Bitch thesis, that female biology has been systematically misread by science, gives organisations a serious, research-led entry point into conversations about gender and authority that often default to slogan. The Oxford zoology training under Richard Dawkins, the National Geographic Explorer designation and the Royal Society Science Book Prize shortlist for The Truth About Animals together establish a level of scientific credibility unusual on a corporate stage. She is a working broadcaster with credits across BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, PBS, Animal Planet and Discovery, which translates into stage craft that holds large audiences on technical material without losing them. Biography highlights Master’s in zoology, New College, Oxford, studying under Richard Dawkins. National Geographic Explorer. Author of Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal, a New York Times bestseller and one of the Telegraph’s 50 best books of 2022. Author of The Truth About Animals, shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize. TED speaker; documentary presenter and producer for BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, PBS, Animal Planet and Discovery. Founder of the Sloth Appreciation Society and regular contributor on BBC Radio 4 programmes including The Infinite Monkey Cage and Woman’s Hour. Biography The alpha leader, the lone silverback, the dominant male at the top of the troop: these are the images management writing has borrowed from animal behaviour for a century. Most of them turn out to be wrong. Newer evolutionary biology shows cooperation, female agency and flexible hierarchy doing more of the work that organisations actually want their leaders to do. Lucy Cooke is the speaker who carries that research into the boardroom. She trained as a zoologist at New College, Oxford under Richard Dawkins, became a National Geographic Explorer, and built a parallel career as a documentary maker and writer, with credits across BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, PBS, Animal Planet and Discovery. Her book Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal, a New York Times bestseller and one of the Telegraph’s 50 best books of 2022, rewrites a great deal of received wisdom about female biology and what evolution actually selects for. The Truth About Animals, shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize, applies the same scrutiny to the popular myths organisations still tell themselves about wolves, alphas and pecking orders. On stage she works the gap between the popular story and the peer-reviewed one. Bonobo societies run on female coalitions and conflict resolution, not dominance displays. Wolf packs are family units, not tournaments. The science is sharper than the management metaphor, and a serious audience leaves able to defend a different model of leadership than the one they walked in with. Key speaking topics Leadership beyond the alpha model Evolutionary biology and human cooperation Gender, biology and authority Teamwork and collective intelligence in animal societies Science communication and storytelling Female leadership through an evolutionary lens Ideal for Senior leadership and executive team offsites where the brief is to reset assumptions about authority and dominance. HR, DEI and culture leads looking for an evidence-based external voice on gender and leadership that sits outside the usual frameworks. Conferences seeking a science-led keynote that lands with both technical and general audiences. Audience outcomes A fact-based critique of the alpha-leader model and why it does not hold up against current animal behaviour research. A new vocabulary for talking about cooperation, female authority and group decision-making at work, drawn from named species and named studies. Memorable case material from the animal kingdom that senior leaders can use in their own conversations and communications. A sharper, science-grounded view of what evolution actually selects for in successful social groups.

Why organisations work with Scott Tillema Practitioner authority that is genuinely operational. The negotiation craft was learned in live SWAT incidents in the Chicago area, not modelled in a classroom. That changes how a sceptical executive room receives the material. A single, transferable framework. The Four Pillars (Understanding, Timing, Delivery, Respect) gives an executive team a shared vocabulary they can use in the next M&A negotiation, regulator call, or internal escalation, not just remember from the talk. A proven public artefact. The TEDxNaperville talk “The Secrets of Hostage Negotiators” has passed one million views, which means most participants arrive primed and engaged rather than cold. Cross-sector translation. The same material has been delivered to Microsoft, Citi, Vimeo, Bosch, YPO chapters across three continents, and audiences at SHRM and PMI conferences, which gives a buyer evidence that the content lands outside its origin context. A teaching credential at IMD. Five guest appearances on IMD Business School’s Advanced High Performance Leadership programme means the material has been pressure-tested in front of senior leaders inside one of Europe’s top executive education environments, not only on the keynote circuit. Biography highlights Twenty-plus years in law enforcement, retired SWAT hostage negotiator, Chicago area FBI-trained crisis negotiator Graduate degree in psychology and bachelor’s degree in behavioral science Negotiation training at Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation and at IMD Business School Five-time guest speaker on IMD Business School’s Advanced High Performance Leadership programme TEDxNaperville speaker, “The Secrets of Hostage Negotiators”, over one million views Founder of Negotiation Excellence, LLC; clients include Microsoft, Citi, Vimeo, Bosch, the FBI, Harvard University and YPO chapters Biography Most negotiation training in corporate settings is built on case studies. Scott Tillema’s is built on incidents where someone’s life depended on the next sentence. Twenty years as a SWAT hostage negotiator in the Chicago area, FBI-trained, and the work shows up in the room as composure rather than theory. The academic foundation is real as well. A graduate degree in psychology, an undergraduate degree in behavioral science, and negotiation training at both Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation and IMD Business School. The combination is what allows the operational material to be taught, not just demonstrated. Leaders leave with a framework they can use, not an anecdote they can retell. The framework is the Four Pillars: Understanding, Timing, Delivery, Respect. It was first laid out for a wider audience in the TEDxNaperville talk “The Secrets of Hostage Negotiators”, which has now passed one million views. The same model now anchors the executive sessions he runs through Negotiation Excellence, LLC for Microsoft, Citi, Vimeo, Bosch, YPO chapters across three continents, and audiences at SHRM and PMI conferences. It is also the basis on which IMD invited him back five times to its Advanced High Performance Leadership programme. What a senior team typically takes from a session is not a lecture on persuasion. It is a more disciplined posture in the conversations that actually decide things, the regulator call, the M&A walk-through, the internal escalation, the workforce announcement that has to land cleanly the first time. Key speaking topics High-stakes communication Crisis negotiation and de-escalation Influence without authority Conflict resolution Trust building Leading difficult conversations Decision-making under pressure Ideal for CEOs, COOs and senior leadership teams preparing for board, regulator, or workforce conversations where the first sentence sets the outcome HR, people and ER leaders managing escalations, restructure conversations, or formal grievance processes Sales, business development and commercial leaders running enterprise negotiations Crisis, security and legal teams who need their senior leaders fluent in de-escalation, not just trained in process Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the Four Pillars (Understanding, Timing, Delivery, Respect) that a leadership team can use in their own conversations the following week A more disciplined sense of when to slow a conversation down and when to move Practical de-escalation techniques drawn from live crisis negotiation, not workshop simulations Greater confidence in conversations where authority alone will not produce the outcome

Why organisations work with Thomas Erikson A four-colour behavioural vocabulary that a 200-person sales team or a board can adopt in a single session and use in the next meeting, with no consultancy follow-up required. One of the highest-recognition author brands in European business: “Surrounded by Idiots” alone is one of Sweden’s best-selling non-fiction titles ever, with the series at over seven million copies in more than 70 languages. Direct application across the hardest interpersonal terrain leaders actually face: difficult bosses, narcissistic colleagues, manipulative behaviour, conflict in cross-cultural and hybrid teams. More than two decades inside companies such as IKEA, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Volvo and KIA, with roughly 120 keynotes a year keeping the material tested against live corporate audiences. A communicator first: the material is built for retention by non-specialists, so the language survives the journey from the keynote room into Monday-morning behaviour. Biography highlights Author of the “Surrounded by” series, including Surrounded by Idiots, Surrounded by Psychopaths, Surrounded by Bad Bosses and Lazy Employees, Surrounded by Narcissists, Surrounded by Setbacks, Surrounded by Energy Vampires and Surrounded by Liars. More than 12 million books sold across the series, translated into over 70 languages; one of the most translated living Swedish authors. Delivers approximately 120 keynote lectures per year to executive and corporate audiences across Europe. Has mentored executives and run sessions at companies including IKEA, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Volvo and KIA Motors. Twenty-plus years specialising in communication, personality dynamics and interpersonal behaviour in professional settings. Built his keynote material on the colour-coded DISC framework (Red, Yellow, Green, Blue), used to map how people decide, communicate and react under pressure. Biography Most workplace tension is not philosophical. It is two competent people reading the same situation in incompatible ways and deciding the other one is the problem. The “Surrounded by Idiots” series turned that observation into a vocabulary that millions of readers now apply at work without having to read a textbook to use it. The series, beginning with Surrounded by Idiots, has sold more than 12 million copies across more than 70 languages, with subsequent titles extending the framework to psychopaths, narcissists, bad bosses, setbacks, energy vampires and liars. The books rest on the colour-coded DISC model, mapping behaviour onto four types (Red, Yellow, Green, Blue) that describe how different people make decisions, give feedback and behave under pressure. The keynote work has run in parallel for over two decades, with roughly 120 corporate lectures a year. Audiences have included IKEA, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Volvo and KIA Motors. The session is built to leave a room of 50 or 500 with the same shared language, so the colour-coding survives into the next sales call, the next performance review and the next conflict between two senior people who quietly cannot stand each other. What is unusual is the reach. Most communication frameworks live inside training departments. This one has crossed into mass-market reading culture, which means a leadership audience often arrives already half-fluent. The job of the keynote is to turn that recognition into something the organisation can actually use. Key speaking topics Behavioural styles and the DISC colour model Communication across different personality types Difficult colleagues, manipulation and narcissism at work Leadership and how to read your team Sales and the behaviour of the buyer Conflict, feedback and tough conversations Resilience and managing setbacks Ideal for Leadership teams that want a shared language for behaviour and communication Sales and customer-facing organisations whose results depend on reading the other side of the table HR, L&D and culture leads designing development around feedback, conflict and team dynamics Cross-cultural, hybrid and matrix teams where misreads between colleagues compound quickly Audience outcomes A shared four-colour vocabulary the whole audience can use to describe colleagues and clients within the same week A clearer read on their own default style and how it is experienced by people who do not share it Practical adjustments for handling the colleague, boss or client they currently find hardest to deal with A working frame for recognising manipulation, narcissism and other high-cost behaviours before they damage the team A common reference point that survives the keynote and shows up in the next round of meetings, reviews and sales calls