Storytelling & Business Communication

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 Jennifer Willey The Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association is held by fewer than 12% of NSA members. For a main-stage keynote where delivery quality is part of the decision, that level of platform competence reduces the risk on the booking. Behind every keynote sits a deployable methodology, the Fearless Fundamentals framework (Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage), built from Wet Cement’s Fearless@Work Survey and a decade of leadership programme delivery. The work can continue inside the organisation after the event. The career arc, from TV news anchor to senior commercial leader at Yahoo, AOL and The Trade Desk to founder of a leadership development firm, gives her credibility with two audiences at once: the people running culture and the people running the business. Wet Cement is dual-certified as a Woman-Owned (WBENC) and Disability-Owned (Disability:IN) business, which matters for organisations applying supplier diversity criteria in procurement, and reinforces the lived basis of her work on confidence, voice and inclusion. Her book Fearless in 5: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage is being published by Pearson in September with a UK and European launch, giving clients in the region a credible local moment to anchor a leadership programme around. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Wet Cement (founded 2017); dual-certified Woman-Owned (WBENC) and Disability-Owned (Disability:IN) business Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), National Speakers Association Author, Fearless in 5: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage (Pearson, September 2026; UK and European launch) Creator of the Fearless in 5 microlearning series and the Advance Women at Work practice; co-founder of WE.DOOH at the Digital Place Based Advertising Association Twenty-year commercial career across Yahoo, AOL, pwc, WebMD, Sharecare and The Trade Desk; earlier career as a TV news anchor and reporter for ABC and CBS affiliates Clients include Johnson & Johnson, Nissan, Paramount, Samsung, Genentech, NBCUniversal, Comcast, NPR, Walmart and Wesco Biography The leadership capabilities that mattered most a decade ago are not the ones under most pressure now. The pressure has shifted to composure, to communicating clearly when the brief keeps changing, and to keeping teams engaged through the third or fourth restructure of the year. That is the work Wet Cement was built around. Jenn Willey founded the firm in 2017 after twenty years leading sales and marketing teams at Yahoo, AOL, pwc, WebMD and The Trade Desk, with an earlier career as a TV news anchor and reporter for ABC and CBS affiliates. The firm’s methodology, the Fearless Fundamentals framework, is anchored on five capabilities: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage. It draws on the Wet Cement Fearless@Work Survey and a research collaboration with Wharton behavioural scientists, and has been deployed at Johnson & Johnson, Nissan, Paramount, Samsung and Genentech. The September publication of Fearless in 5: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage with Pearson is the first time the methodology has been put between hard covers. The retitling, from a women’s leadership guide in earlier framing to a broader leadership framework now, mirrors a real shift in how Wet Cement is bought. Women’s leadership remains a substantial specialty, anchored by the Advance Women at Work practice and her co-founding role at WE.DOOH at the Digital Place Based Advertising Association. The primary work is now leadership development for change-fatigued teams across the seniority range. The Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association, earned by fewer than 12% of NSA members, is the platform credential most large rooms screen for. It marks Jenn out from most leadership development founders, who do not keynote at her standard. The combination of CSP-grade delivery and a deployable methodology is what makes her work usable past the event itself. Key speaking topics Fearless leadership and team capability under repeated change Self-leadership and resilience under sustained pressure Executive presence and confident communication for senior leaders Inclusive leadership and the next phase after DEI Women’s leadership and the Advance Women at Work approach Career navigation, sponsorship and the personal board of directors Ideal for Heads of leadership development and CHROs designing executive and senior-leader programmes for change-fatigued teams Executive teams and senior off-sites looking for a speaker who can also run the programme behind the keynote Women’s leadership networks, ERGs and high-potential cohorts that need a credible voice on confidence, advancement and inclusion without performative DEI framing Media, technology, advertising and life sciences organisations where her commercial vocabulary maps directly onto the audience Audience outcomes A working version of the Fearless Fundamentals (Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage) applied to their own context Specific behaviours for staying composed and decisive when the brief keeps changing, drawn from the Wet Cement Fearless@Work research The vocabulary to coach team members through impostor patterns, confidence gaps and self-advocacy challenges A defensible argument for why inclusion still matters as a leadership capability, useful in rooms where DEI as a label has been retired A method for designing and using a personal board of directors as a working career navigation tool

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 Maeve Campbell A working climate journalist on a national news desk, which means her interview discipline at the front of a room comes from doing it every week on Channel 4 News, not from a speaker-circuit second career. Established editorial authority on the climate brief: founder of Euronews Green, monthly Forbes column, bylines in The Guardian, Evening Standard and Fast Company. Direct advisory line into the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership as media advisor, which keeps her current on what the corporate sustainability community is actually arguing about. A track record on the events that matter inside the sector: Blue Earth Summit, UN Goals House, Channel 4 Climate Summit and the Regenerative Agriculture Summit. Built for moderation, not lecture. Useful for boards and leadership teams who want a credible external voice running the room, not a keynote slot they then need to debate around. Biography highlights Presenter and producer, Channel 4 News (ITN, London). Founder of Euronews Green; Deputy Editor and Acting Managing Editor across a five-year tenure. Monthly columnist, Forbes, on climate and sustainability. Media advisor, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Bylines in The Guardian, Evening Standard and Fast Company. Host and MC for Blue Earth Summit, UN Goals House, Channel 4 Climate Summit, Regenerative Agriculture Summit and the Sustainable Events Show. Biography Most corporate climate communication is engineered for plausible deniability. Statements are calibrated, targets are aspirational, and the language is carefully laundered for legal and PR. That is exactly the register sceptical audiences now distrust on sight, and the one regulators and journalists are most actively pulling apart. The Green section at Euronews, which Campbell founded and then led as Deputy Editor and Acting Managing Editor, was built around a different bet: that the audience for climate stories was wider and more sophisticated than the industry assumed, and that it would respond to journalism rather than advocacy. She now reports the climate brief at Channel 4 News at ITN in London, writes a monthly Forbes column, and contributes to The Guardian, Evening Standard and Fast Company. The advisory work with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, where she sits as media advisor, sharpens the line into the corporate sustainability community. It also explains why her stage presence is built around moderation rather than declaration. The format she is most often booked for is hosting and chairing at the events the sector takes seriously: Blue Earth Summit, UN Goals House, Channel 4’s Climate Summit and the Regenerative Agriculture Summit. For a leadership team, the value is specific. She is a credible external journalist who can run a room on sustainability without softening the questions, and who can pressure-test internal climate narratives before they meet the same scrutiny in public. Key speaking topics Climate communication and narrative authenticity Sustainability and corporate climate strategy Greenwashing and reputational risk The energy transition Circular economy and green innovation Environmental reporting and the media landscape Stakeholder engagement on climate Ideal for Sustainability leads, ESG officers and corporate affairs teams preparing public-facing climate narratives. Boards and executive teams that need an external journalist to chair or moderate sustainability sessions credibly. Industry conferences and summits in energy, food, finance and consumer sectors with a climate or transition agenda. Internal leadership offsites where the brief is to stress-test the climate story before it goes public. Audience outcomes A sharper read on how climate stories now land with mainstream and specialist audiences. The questions a working climate journalist would put to a corporate sustainability claim, and why they matter for reputation. A clearer view of what separates credible climate communication from greenwashing-adjacent messaging. An informed sense of the regulatory, media and stakeholder trajectory shaping environmental reporting.

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

Why organisations work with Susi O’Neill She translates frontier technology into language non-technical executives can act on, drawing on years running global brand content for Kaspersky, the world’s largest privately owned cybersecurity firm. Her practice is built around the adoption gap, not the technology itself, which is why she resonates with leaders whose AI rollouts have stalled at proof-of-concept. She brings a builder’s track record in tech storytelling, including the Platinum MarCom Award winning Insight Story podcast for Kaspersky and Editor-in-Chief roles on Secure Futures magazine and the Tomorrow Unlocked channel. Through EVA and her Rethinking the Hype Cycle newsletter, she works with leaders on inclusive AI adoption, including the lag in women’s engagement with AI tools and what closing it changes about who benefits from the technology. Biography highlights Founder and Executive Director of EVA, a London-based technology and communications consultancy. Former Head of B2B Brand Content (Global) at Kaspersky. Editor-in-Chief of Kaspersky’s Secure Futures magazine and Tomorrow Unlocked cyberculture channel. Creator and host of the Platinum MarCom Award winning Insight Story podcast. Named in Pepper Content’s Top 50 Global Women in Content 2023. Author of the Rethinking the Hype Cycle newsletter on AI and frontier technology adoption. Biography The hard part of AI is rarely the model. It is the distance between an executive sponsor and the team being asked to use a new tool by Friday. O’Neill has spent her career working that distance, first inside one of the world’s largest cybersecurity firms, now from the outside through her consultancy EVA. At Kaspersky, she ran global B2B brand content and edited Secure Futures, the company’s business-leader magazine, alongside the Tomorrow Unlocked cyberculture channel. She commissioned and hosted Insight Story, a podcast unpacking tech trends for executives that won a Platinum MarCom Award in 2023. The work taught her how senior buyers actually absorb information about complex technology, and where the standard tech-marketing playbook fails them. EVA, the practice she founded next, takes that experience into client work on AI strategy, responsible technology and adoption. Her newsletter Rethinking the Hype Cycle puts the same question to a wider audience: what does a serious organisation do once the AI announcement is out and the cultural work begins. She also writes and speaks on inclusive adoption, including the documented lag in women’s use of generative AI tools and what it costs organisations that ignore it. Earlier brand-content programmes for EY, GSK and Unilever, and a recognition in Pepper Content’s Top 50 Global Women in Content, sit behind that current work. The throughline is consistent. Technology only changes a business when the people inside it are willing to use it, and most organisations are still under-investing in the communications and trust work that makes that happen. Key speaking topics AI adoption and the hype cycle Responsible and trusted technology Frontier and emerging technologies for business Inclusive AI and women in technology Tech communications and thought leadership Cybersecurity culture and digital trust Ideal for CIO, CTO and Chief Digital Officer audiences whose AI programmes have stalled in pilot. CMO, communications and brand leaders building tech credibility with non-technical buyers. Boards and executive teams setting AI governance and responsible-use principles. Diversity, talent and L&D leaders working on inclusive AI capability across the workforce. Audience outcomes A clearer reading of where their organisation actually sits on the AI hype cycle, and which moves are worth making next. A practical sense of how to bring sceptical or hesitant employees with them, instead of around them. Specific examples of how serious organisations are translating frontier tech into adoption, not just announcements. A sharper view of inclusive AI as a capability question, including who is using these tools and who is being left behind.

Why organisations work with Ross Reekie He brings primary research material that most engagement speakers do not have: the Fun Jobs Project is a multi-year field experiment in which he personally took on roles from ski instructor to stand-up comedian to test where meaning actually originates at work. He treats meaning as a performance variable, not a wellbeing variable. The argument lands with operating leaders who have stopped believing engagement programmes pay back. His academic base is serious. An Engineering degree from Edinburgh, an MBA and a Master’s in Sustainable Leadership from MGSM Sydney, and PhD-track research at Macquarie give him a credible research spine to sit alongside the field work. He is built for interactive formats. His keynote uses live experiments, props and audience participation rather than slide narration, which suits internal leadership offsites and culture-launch events. He has tested the same content across two continents and across sectors, with named conference platforms including TEDxMonashUniversity, TEDxGlasgowCaledonianUniversity, and the Urban Future Global Conference. Biography highlights Founder of Rise Consulting, Sydney, working with leadership teams on meaningful work and workplace culture. TEDx speaker at TEDxMonashUniversity (2019) and TEDxGlasgowCaledonianUniversity (2019). Creator of the Fun Jobs Project, a live research experiment into the sources of meaning at work. Host of The Meaning of Work podcast, with hundreds of interviews from interns to chief executives. MBA and Master’s in Sustainable Leadership from MGSM Sydney; Engineering degree from the University of Edinburgh; Master’s in Research underway at Macquarie University. Twenty years of consulting work with leadership teams across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. Biography Most organisations have stopped believing their own engagement data. Scores hold steady, but discretionary effort drains away, and the standard interventions of values workshops, recognition platforms and mission refreshes no longer change behaviour. The interesting question is no longer whether people are engaged. It is what they are committing to, and why. Ross Reekie has spent two decades inside that question. He founded Rise Consulting in Sydney to work with leadership teams on meaningful work and workplace culture, building on twenty years of consulting across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. His academic base sits alongside the practice: an Engineering degree from the University of Edinburgh, an MBA and a Master’s in Sustainable Leadership from MGSM Sydney, and Master’s research at Macquarie University on what makes work matter. The Fun Jobs Project is what sets the work apart. After burning out as the meaningful-work expert who had lost meaning in his own work, Reekie ran a live experiment on himself, taking roles from ski instructor to stand-up comedian to opera extra to test where engagement actually comes from. The output is a model of meaning that starts with a playful, exploratory mindset rather than with mission statements, and that treats curiosity and connection as performance inputs. He brings the same material to TEDx stages at Monash and Glasgow Caledonian, to the Urban Future Global Conference, and to private leadership rooms. His keynote runs as a live, interactive session rather than a talk, with props and audience experiments built in. For a senior people or transformation leader trying to revive a tired culture, he gives them a research-grounded argument they can hand to an operating board. Key speaking topics Meaningful work and workplace culture Employee engagement and the social contract of work Purpose and authenticity in leadership Burnout and recovery in senior teams Belonging and team connection Fear as a performance blocker Playful curiosity as a leadership capability Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers rebuilding engagement after a period of flat scores or fatigued change programmes Heads of culture and internal communications launching or refreshing a purpose narrative Leadership teams and executive offsites looking for a working session rather than a talk Conference organisers in the future-of-work, employee experience, and urban or civic-leadership space Audience outcomes A research-grounded view of why meaning at work is a performance question, not a wellbeing question A clear distinction between engagement programmes that move behaviour and those that do not Specific language for the mindset shifts that produce more discretionary commitment at work Practical prompts for leaders to test on their own teams before changing anything organisation-wide A felt experience of a working session, not a lecture, that participants can replicate in their own offsites

Why organisations work with Robin Ince Sixteen years co-hosting The Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox gave him a working method for translating serious ideas into language a general audience can act on. Few speakers have practised that craft at that scale. His account of late-diagnosed ADHD in Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal is one of the most widely read first-person treatments of adult neurodiversity from a recognisably high-functioning public figure. That makes him useful to leadership audiences who do not see themselves in standard neurodiversity training. He brings genuine comedy timing to material that is usually delivered flat. Boards and senior leadership offsites can absorb difficult content from him that they would resist from a clinical speaker. He carries credentials that survive scrutiny in any room: Honorary Fellow at UCL, honorary doctorate from Royal Holloway, Fellow of the British Science Association, Booksellers Association Author of the Year. Biography highlights Co-host of BBC Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox, 2009 to 2025; the show won the 2011 Sony Gold Award for Best Speech Programme. Honorary Fellow of University College London and honorary Doctor of Science of Royal Holloway, University of London. Author of I’m a Joke and So Are You, The Importance of Being Interested, Bibliomaniac, and Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity; co-author with Brian Cox of How to Build a Universe. Booksellers Association Author of the Year, 2022; Time Out Outstanding Contribution to Comedy, 2006; multiple Chortle Awards including Best Compere. Co-founder of the Cosmic Shambles Network and creator of Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People, the annual science variety show that has run since 2008. Public advocate on adult ADHD and neurodiversity following his own late diagnosis, anchoring his current touring show The Universe and the Neurodiverse. Biography The Infinite Monkey Cage ran on BBC Radio 4 for sixteen years and won the Sony Gold Award for Best Speech Programme along the way. Robin Ince co-presented it with the physicist Brian Cox throughout, and the working method he developed there sits at the centre of what he now offers organisations: serious science, philosophy and literature delivered in language a general audience will actually use. That method has produced four solo books and one co-authored with Cox. The Importance of Being Interested and Bibliomaniac established him as a writer on curiosity and reading culture. Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal, published by Macmillan in 2025, did something different. Following his own late ADHD diagnosis, he wrote a first-person account of adult neurodiversity that has been unusually well received by readers who do not see themselves in standard workplace material on the subject. The credentials behind the work are real. He is an Honorary Fellow of University College London and an Honorary Doctor of Science of Royal Holloway. He is a Fellow of the British Science Association and was Booksellers Association Author of the Year in 2022. He co-founded the Cosmic Shambles Network and has curated the Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People science variety show every December since 2008. For corporate audiences the proposition is specific. He is useful when a leadership team wants to talk seriously about neurodiversity and curiosity without flattening either into HR language, and he is one of very few speakers who can take a room from a research finding to a usable insight to a genuine laugh in the same minute. Key speaking topics Adult neurodiversity and late ADHD diagnosis Scientific curiosity as a habit of mind Communicating complex ideas to non-specialist audiences Humour and humanity Reading culture and the value of attention Science, music and comedy as a single conversation Ideal for Leadership teams and HR directors building neurodiversity work that goes beyond policy Boards and senior offsites looking for substantive content delivered with comedy timing Innovation, R&D and learning functions who want to reset what curiosity looks like in practice Conference organisers programming a science, culture or curiosity strand Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about adult ADHD and neurodiversity in senior settings A clearer sense of why attention, not information, is the scarce resource in their organisation Specific examples from sixteen years of putting scientists in front of general audiences, with the lessons that translate Permission to be more interested in their own work, which most leaders need more than they admit