Storytelling & Business Communication

Why organisations work with Will Dalton Live-broadcast instincts. Eighteen years of Champions League, Olympics, and Premier League coverage means he reads a room the way he reads a touchline, with the timing of someone used to going out live. Interview craft built on names like Pele, José Mourinho, Andy Murray, Steven Gerrard, and Jackie Stewart. He gets executives, panellists, and customers to say something worth hearing. A presenter who has worked Chelsea TV since 2010 and Premier League Productions at top-flight grounds across England. Stage nerves are not part of the equation. After-dinner range that uses sport as material, not metaphor: dressing-room access, locker-room moments, the texture of elite events told with a journalist’s eye. Irish broadcast presence through Virgin Media Sport, useful for clients running Dublin events or wanting a host who reads as international rather than purely UK domestic. Biography highlights Presenter and reporter, Virgin Media Sport Ireland. Chelsea TV presenter since 2010, covering senior team and academy. Premier League Productions reporter at top-flight English club grounds and Champions League fixtures. Olympic Broadcasting Service coverage at Youth Olympics Nanjing 2014, Rio 2016, and Pyeongchang 2018. Reporting credits at ITV News, ITN, Setanta Sports News, and Reuters. Post-graduate qualification in Broadcast Journalism and Media Communications. Biography Going out live is a specific skill. Eighteen years of Champions League nights, Olympic Games, and post-match interviews at Stamford Bridge train a presenter to think in seconds, hold a room with one talkback voice in the ear, and recover when the running order falls apart. That is the craft Will Dalton brings to corporate events. His broadcast home is Virgin Media Sport in Ireland, where he fronts UEFA Champions League, Europa League, and Nations League coverage. Alongside that, he has been a Chelsea TV presenter since 2010, reported for Premier League Productions from grounds across England, and covered three Olympic Games for the Olympic Broadcasting Service. Earlier roles took in ITV News, ITN, Setanta Sports News, and Reuters. The interview list reads as a who’s who of sport: Pele, Andy Murray, José Mourinho, Mark Cavendish, Eden Hazard, Steven Gerrard, John Terry, Jackie Stewart. That work is the underwriting for his stage presence. Buyers booking him for a host or moderator role are buying a journalist’s instinct for questions, not a celebrity name on a poster. For after-dinner and keynote briefs, the material is sports storytelling with a working broadcaster’s access: what elite performers actually say off camera, how teams behave under pressure, how a manager’s first thirty seconds in a press conference tells you whether the dressing room is intact. The themes connect to business audiences, but the value is in the texture and specificity, not in claims to leadership theory. Key speaking topics Conference hosting and moderation After-dinner sports storytelling Live broadcast interviewing High-performance sport culture Communication and audience engagement Champions League and Olympic event reporting Ideal for Corporate conference organisers needing a professional broadcast host or MC Awards nights and gala dinners seeking a sports-led after-dinner speaker Panel moderation for sponsor activations, sports partnerships, and broadcast-adjacent industries Irish or UK events wanting a host with cross-market broadcast credibility Audience outcomes A live programme that runs cleanly: tight transitions, sharp introductions, controlled Q and A. Panel sessions that produce useable answers because the moderator knows how to ask follow-ups. After-dinner content with first-hand sports detail rather than recycled inspirational tropes. Interviews on stage with executives, customers, or guests that read as conversations, not scripted exchanges.

Why organisations work with Vinh Giang His communication framework is rooted in the psychology of illusion; specifically, how professional magicians manage audience perception, belief, and attention. This gives organisations access to a model of influence that is empirically grounded in audience psychology, not generic presentation technique. His signature concept: that every professional has a habitual voice, not a natural one, and that this voice can be deliberately rebuilt, gives individuals a concrete, actionable framework rather than general advice about confidence or impact. He built 52Kards, an online magic education platform that reached 800,000 students globally, demonstrating that he has applied the same principles of skill transfer and engagement he teaches to others at commercial scale. The STAGE Academy programme translates his performance methodology into structured organisational training, giving companies a repeatable development pathway, not a one-off motivational event. He was named South Australia’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2013 and has delivered over 80 live events internationally, including a TEDx appearance at Macquarie University: his credibility is practitioner-built, not academic. Biography highlights Co-founder of 52Kards (formerly Encyclopedia of Magic), an online education platform with over 800,000 enrolled students worldwide CEO of Luminary Productions, a training, development, and video production company Creator of the STAGE Academy, a structured public speaking and communication programme for professionals South Australia Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2013) Multiple award-winning performer at the Adelaide Fringe Festival: Top Voted Show and Top Reviewed Show, three consecutive years (2012-2014) TEDx speaker, Macquarie University, on communication and professional performance Biography Vinh Giang’s central argument is that most professionals communicate well below the standard their thinking deserves, and that the gap between expertise and expression is a learned problem with a learnable fix. His methodology doesn’t come from corporate training or academic research. It comes from 15 years of studying what professional magicians do: how they control attention, manage belief, and shape the experience of an audience in real time. The insight he took from performance is precise. Robert-Houdin’s principle: that a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician, reframes communication as a discipline of craft, not personality. Applied to business, this means that a leader’s authority in a room is not fixed. It is a set of habits, many of them inherited from childhood, that can be replaced with deliberate ones. That argument is the foundation of the STAGE Academy, his structured communication programme for professionals. Giang is not a theorist. He dropped out of a commerce and law degree at the University of Adelaide to build 52Kards, an online magic education platform that eventually reached over 800,000 students worldwide. That business – built before the term “creator economy” existed – earned him the South Australia Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2013. His performance work at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, where his shows won Top Voted and Top Reviewed for three consecutive years, gave him a practical laboratory for the same principles he now teaches to senior professionals. His clients have included Microsoft, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The organisations that engage him are not looking for motivational uplift; they are investing in a measurable upgrade in how their people present, persuade, and lead under pressure. Key speaking topics Performance-based communication for leaders The psychology of influence and audience perception Vocal presence and professional authority Storytelling and high-stakes persuasion Confidence and mindset in professional communication Communication as a teachable skill set Entrepreneurship and the business of building trust Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite executives seeking to sharpen influence and executive presence Sales and commercial leaders whose teams communicate and persuade in high-stakes environments CHROs and L&D leads commissioning communication capability programmes Conference audiences drawn from professional services, financial services, or technology – where credibility depends on the ability to make complex ideas land clearly Audience outcomes A concrete model for understanding why their current communication habits underperform, and what specifically to change Practical tools for rebuilding vocal presence and delivery authority, drawn from professional performance training A framework for structuring high-stakes communication; presentations, negotiations, and leadership conversations, that moves audiences to action Greater awareness of the gap between how they intend to come across and how they are actually received A shift from treating communication as a soft skill to treating it as a professional discipline with measurable standards

Why organisations work with Tim Willcox Two decades of live BBC anchoring on the stories boards now name as risk: the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the Libyan civil war, the Athens bailout, the Catalan crisis, Ukraine, Brexit. He has interviewed the principals, not just read the wires. Conference moderator credits at IATA World Aviation Day, World Travel and Tourism Council, World Science Forum, the Emirates Literature Festival and the ipSoft AI Conference. Senior international audiences, technical content, multilingual rooms. Media training and crisis-communication coaching for executives at Novartis, HSBC, BT, Nationwide, Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Audit Office. Direct experience of how a board sounds, and fails to sound, under pressure from a journalist. Fluent Spanish and conversational French, with first-hand reporting from Chile, Spain, Argentina, Libya, Egypt, Japan and the Philippines. Useful in any conference room that is not solely Anglophone. A trained newsroom interviewer, not a celebrity host. He extracts content from senior executives rather than displacing them. Biography highlights Twenty-plus years as a BBC News anchor across BBC One, BBC World News, the BBC News Channel, BBC Four and BBC radio. Former ITN Arts and Media Correspondent whose field reporting ran from the 1994 Rwanda genocide to Iraq under Saddam Hussein; presented live from New York during the 9/11 attacks and was the first ITN journalist to break news of the Paris crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales. Live BBC anchor on the 2010 Chilean mining rescue, the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the 2011 Libyan civil war and the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Conference chair credits include IATA World Aviation Day (Mauritius), World Travel and Tourism Council (Buenos Aires), World Science Forum (Jordan), ipSoft AI Conference (Barcelona), Emirates Literature Festival (Dubai), Maritime Standard Awards (Dubai) and NHS Expo (Manchester). Media training and crisis-communications coaching for Novartis, HSBC, BT, Nationwide, Crown Prosecution Service, Severn Trent Water, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Audit Office. Documentaries for Channel 4 and Channel 5; began on Fleet Street writing for The Times, The Telegraph, Mirror Group, the Financial Times and The Spectator. Biography The chair of a senior conference is the variable that decides whether a panel becomes a frank discussion or a sequence of pre-cleared talking points. Tim Willcox spent more than twenty years as a BBC News anchor running live interviews under deadline, including with sitting heads of state, and that is the craft he brings to a corporate room. His on-air career covered the stories that now sit on board risk registers: the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the Libyan civil war, the Athens bailout, the Catalan independence crisis, the Ukraine war, Brexit. Before the BBC he was ITN’s Arts and Media Correspondent, reporting from the front line of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and from Iraq under Saddam Hussein. He presented live from New York during the 9/11 attacks and broke news of the Paris crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales. That ground translates directly to international conference work. He has chaired at IATA World Aviation Day in Mauritius, the World Travel and Tourism Council summit in Buenos Aires, the World Science Forum in Jordan, the ipSoft AI Conference in Barcelona and the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai. He works in fluent Spanish and reasonable French, which matters when the audience is not solely Anglophone. The third strand is media training. Novartis, HSBC, BT, Nationwide, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Audit Office have used him to coach executives on hostile interviews and crisis communications. The value is the same as on stage: a trained newsroom interviewer who knows exactly how a board sounds when it is not ready. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and live news literacy for boards Crisis communications and executive media performance Leadership under live media scrutiny International conference moderation and panel facilitation Awards and after-dinner hosting Reporting on the front line: lessons from twenty years of breaking news Spanish and Latin American business and political coverage Ideal for Boards and ExCos commissioning a chair for senior off-sites on geopolitical, regulatory or reputational risk CEOs, CFOs and Chief Communications Officers preparing for hostile media or crisis press conferences International industry associations running multilingual flagship summits and awards Conference programmers needing a moderator who can carry a head-of-state interview as readily as a panel of operators Audience outcomes A moderated panel that produces actual exchange between senior speakers, not parallel monologues Sharper executive performance under journalist-style questioning A working sense of how a live news cycle interprets a corporate statement and where the pressure points sit Specific reporting examples (Egypt, Libya, Chile, Catalonia, Brexit) that connect macro events to commercial decisions A flagship event held to BBC interviewing standards from the chair

Why organisations work with Tim Smith Two decades on Steve Wright in the Afternoon on BBC Radio 2 is rehearsal time most corporate hosts do not have. He arrives on stage already knowing how to read a room of strangers in real time. He has built a working production relationship with FTSE-scale internal communications teams through podcast series for BAE Systems, Network Rail, BT, Jaguar Land Rover, Diageo, UK Power Networks and McVitie’s. He understands what a regulated employer can and cannot put into a sponsored programme. He interviews senior leaders, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair on the Steve Wright Show, without losing the audience or the executive. That craft transfers directly to fireside chats and keynote interviews at corporate events. His current weekday morning slot on Magic Classical and continuing radio practice keep his interview rhythm sharp. Buyers are not booking a former broadcaster; they are booking someone still on air every week. Biography highlights Co-presenter on Steve Wright in the Afternoon, BBC Radio 2, from 1999 to 2022. Presenter of the UK Top 20 Chart Show on BBC World Service for 13 years, succeeding Paul Burnett. Weekday morning presenter on Magic Classical from June 2025. Corporate podcast presenter for BAE Systems, Network Rail, BT, Jaguar Land Rover, Diageo, UK Power Networks and McVitie’s. Sony Award-nominated for Picture Show on BBC GLR. Covered the 2000 Open Golf Championship at St Andrews and Wimbledon for official broadcast platforms. Biography The hardest part of a corporate set piece is rarely the strategy on the slide. It is the twelve seconds after the host introduces the CEO, when the audience decides whether to listen. A broadcaster trained on live national radio knows how to fill those twelve seconds. Most corporate MCs do not. Tim joined BBC Radio 2 in 1999 as co-presenter on Steve Wright in the Afternoon and stayed for 23 years, alongside Janey Lee Grace and Joyce Frost. Before that he had presented on BBC Radio 1, on BBC GLR where Picture Show earned a Sony Award nomination, and the UK Top 20 Chart Show on BBC World Service for 13 years. The corporate work runs in parallel. He presents podcast series for BAE Systems, Network Rail, BT, Jaguar Land Rover, Diageo, UK Power Networks and McVitie’s, working inside the editorial and compliance constraints that internal communications teams in regulated industries actually operate under. From June 2025 he also presents the weekday morning show on Magic Classical. For a buyer, the proposition is narrow and clear. He is not a subject-matter speaker on a business theme. He is a host with two decades of live national broadcast behind him, hired to make a conference, awards night, town hall or branded podcast sound like something the audience wants to keep listening to. Key speaking topics Conference and awards hosting Keynote interviews and fireside chats with senior leaders Corporate podcast presenting and production Internal town hall and all-hands hosting Panel moderation Live broadcast craft for corporate events Ideal for Internal communications and employee experience leads commissioning town halls, all-hands events and leadership broadcasts Marketing and brand teams running awards programmes, conferences and customer events Corporate affairs teams producing branded podcast series for employee or external audiences Event producers and agency partners briefing on plenary and panel hosting Audience outcomes A plenary that runs to time, with senior speakers introduced and handled without dead air. A keynote interview that draws the answer the audience came to hear, not the answer the executive rehearsed. A panel that moves, with questions sharp enough that the panellists have to respond rather than recite. An awards night with pace, where category presentations land and the room is still engaged at the final award. A podcast episode that sounds like national broadcast quality rather than a recorded internal meeting.

Why organisations work with Tim Sebastian Most geopolitical commentary tells leaders what to think. Sebastian built his career on asking the questions political leaders didn’t prepare for – and brings that same interrogative discipline, along with the preparation that goes with it, directly into corporate forums. As founder of both The Doha Debates (BBC World News, 2004–2012) and The New Arab Debates (Deutsche Welle, 2011–2015), he designed and chaired globally broadcast forums on the most contested political and social issues of those years – a structural model directly applicable to executive events dealing with divided stakeholder views. His field experience – covering the Solidarity revolution in Warsaw, reporting from Moscow until the Soviet authorities expelled him in 1985, then Washington through the end of the Cold War – means his reading of political risk is grounded in how authoritarian and transitional political systems actually behave, not in how they present themselves. Where panels typically produce managed consensus, Sebastian’s approach – documented in testimonials from the World Bank, the Open Government Partnership Global Summit, and the Sharjah International Government Communications Forum – consistently surfaces real disagreement and genuine answers from senior participants. Biography highlights Original presenter of HARDtalk, BBC World, March 1997 to March 2007; subjects included US Presidents Clinton, Carter and Trump, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lee Kuan Yew, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu Founder and chairman of The Doha Debates (Qatar Foundation / BBC World News, 2004–2012) – the highest-rated weekend programme on BBC World News during its run Founder of The New Arab Debates (Deutsche Welle, 2011–2015); currently hosts Conflict Zone, Deutsche Welle’s flagship political interview programme BBC foreign correspondent in Warsaw (covering the Solidarity revolution), Moscow and Washington; expelled from the USSR by Soviet authorities in 1985 BAFTA Richard Dimbleby Award (1981); Royal Television Society Television Journalist of the Year (1982); RTS Interviewer of the Year (2000 and 2001) BA Honours, Modern Languages, New College Oxford; Fellow Commoner, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, 2015–16 Author of eight novels and two non-fiction books; contributor to the Mail on Sunday, Sunday Times and New York Times Biography Political leaders rarely say what they mean in public. The gap between declared position and actual intent is where strategic risk lives – and where most corporate scenario-planning stops. Tim Sebastian has spent four decades on the other side of that gap. As the original presenter of HARDtalk from 1997 to 2007, Sebastian established the template for rigorous political accountability on international television. His subjects included Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lee Kuan Yew and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The preparation was meticulous. The questions were the ones nobody else was asking. Before the studios, there was the field. Sebastian reported for the BBC from Warsaw during the Solidarity revolution, was stationed in Moscow until Soviet authorities expelled him in 1985, and covered Washington through the final years of the Cold War. That direct experience of political systems under pressure – their vulnerabilities, their rhetorical strategies, their relationship to transparency – underpins everything he subsequently built. In 2004, he founded The Doha Debates under the Qatar Foundation: a globally broadcast forum for contested political and social issues that became the highest-rated weekend programme on BBC World News. When the Arab Spring began in 2011, he launched The New Arab Debates in Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan. For organisations navigating politically complex strategy across markets where regulatory intent, diplomatic tension and conflict risk are live variables, Sebastian’s value is structural as much as analytical. He knows how leaders behave when held to account in public. He knows how to design forums that produce real answers rather than prepared ones. He currently hosts Conflict Zone on Deutsche Welle, and has moderated major events for the World Bank, the Open Government Partnership and the Sharjah International Government Communications Forum. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and international affairs Political leadership and accountability Structured debate and forum design Conflict, diplomacy and international security The Middle East and Arab world politics Global power dynamics and strategic risk Media scrutiny and leadership communication Ideal for Senior leadership and board-level conferences where geopolitical context is central to strategy Government, policy and international affairs audiences Organisations operating in or expanding into politically complex or high-risk markets Events requiring a moderator for high-stakes, multi-stakeholder panels or debates Audience outcomes A clearer framework for reading political intent behind public positions – from governments, regulators and international actors Direct exposure to how political leaders respond under structured, uncompromising questioning – and what that reveals about how decisions are actually made Practical understanding of how structured debate can surface genuine strategic disagreement rather than managed consensus Greater confidence in treating geopolitical risk as a board-level strategic variable, with tools for interrogating it rather than simply monitoring it

Why organisations work with Tim Harford Translates economic and statistical research into commercial decisions, drawing on a Financial Times column that has run for nearly two decades and a body of ten published books. Brings credibility on numbers that very few speakers can match: Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and OBE for services to economic understanding. Reframes innovation as an evidence-based discipline grounded in adaptation and failure, the central thesis of “Adapt” and “Messy”, rather than the usual creativity rhetoric. Equips senior audiences to interrogate their own data culture using the rules from “How To Make The World Add Up”, a practical antidote to misleading statistics inside organisations. Trusted as a host, moderator and after-dinner speaker by serious audiences because his radio craft on “More or Less” and “Cautionary Tales” carries directly into the room. Biography highlights Senior columnist, Financial Times, writing “The Undercover Economist”. Presenter, BBC Radio 4’s “More or Less”, the long-running statistics-in-the-news programme. Host of “Cautionary Tales”, a Pushkin Industries podcast, and creator of “Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy”. Author of ten books, including “The Undercover Economist”, “Adapt”, “Messy”, “How To Make The World Add Up” and “The Truth Detective”. Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and of Brasenose College, Oxford; Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford. OBE for services to Improving Economic Understanding; winner of the Bastiat Prize (twice), the Wincott Journalist of the Year award, and the Royal Statistical Society award for journalistic excellence. Biography Most organisations claim to be evidence-led. Few are. Decisions are framed in numbers but driven by narrative, and innovation programmes routinely refuse to learn from the failures that contain the most useful information. Harford’s work, across the Financial Times column, ten books and two long-running BBC and Pushkin productions, has been built around exactly that gap. His books map the intellectual territory leaders care about. “The Undercover Economist” reframed everyday markets through the lens of price, scarcity and incentive, and has sold more than 1.5 million copies in thirty languages. “Adapt” and “Messy” argue that progress depends on disciplined trial, error and tolerance for disorder, a more honest account of innovation than most corporate playbooks allow. “How To Make The World Add Up” gives senior audiences a practical method for testing the numbers they are asked to act on. The credentials behind that work are unusual. Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, Associate Member of Nuffield College Oxford, an OBE for services to economic understanding, and a body of awards from the Bastiat Prize to the Wincott. As presenter of BBC Radio 4’s “More or Less”, Harford has spent years publicly stress-testing the statistics that shape policy and business commentary, which makes him one of the few speakers who can hold a senior room on data culture without resorting to platitudes. For boards and leadership teams, the value is concrete. Sharper questions about innovation portfolios, a working method for separating signal from noise, and a more honest model of how organisations actually learn. The recent “Cautionary Tales” series, which dissects high-profile organisational failures, has become a reference point for leaders thinking seriously about how decisions go wrong. Key speaking topics Behavioural economics in commercial decision-making Innovation, adaptation and learning from failure Statistical literacy and data culture in organisations Economic forces shaping business and policy Creativity, disorder and team productivity Cognitive bias and judgement under uncertainty Ideal for Boards and executive committees confronting decisions where the numbers are contested Strategy, innovation and R&D leaders building portfolios under uncertainty CFOs and finance functions reviewing how evidence is presented and challenged internally Senior leadership offsites where the brief calls for serious intellectual content with broad relevance Audience outcomes A working method for interrogating statistics and management dashboards before acting on them A clearer model of innovation as managed trial and error, with practical implications for portfolio choice Sharper recognition of the cognitive errors that recur in senior decision-making Concrete references from “Cautionary Tales” and “More or Less” that audiences can use to reframe their own debates

Why organisations work with Tim Collins He has commanded under live fire. The lessons on composure, communication, and accountability are drawn from running the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group in Iraq, not a leadership model. His eve-of-battle speech is one of the most studied pieces of leadership communication of the last twenty years, hung in the Oval Office and quoted in business schools. Few speakers can talk about leadership communication from that position. Eight years as an officer in 22 SAS, including as Operations Officer, gives him a vocabulary on small-team performance, selection, and trust that very few corporate speakers can match credibly. He builds the talk around the audience’s actual leadership tension. The military stories are evidence, not the point. Biography highlights Commanded the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Eight years as an officer in 22 SAS, including service as Operations Officer. Appointed OBE in 2003 for service in Iraq. Author of Rules of Engagement: A Life in Conflict (Headline, 2006). Co-founder and Chairman of New Century Consulting, an intelligence-led security services firm working with government clients since 2006. Regular media commentator and columnist on defence and security, with bylines in the Telegraph and other UK national press. Biography The eve-of-battle address to the Royal Irish Regiment Battle Group, delivered in Kuwait on 19 March 2003, was extemporised and recorded in shorthand by a single journalist. President George W. Bush later had a copy hung in the Oval Office. It is now a fixture on leadership reading lists, taught for what it does in five minutes: set the moral frame, give the team something to hold onto, and accept the weight of command without flinching. The speech is not why senior leaders book Collins, but it explains what they get. He commanded a battalion in combat, with all that implies for accountability, communication, and the long shadow that command throws over a career. He came back to allegations of war crimes, cleared his name, and was promoted to colonel. That sequence, command, scrutiny, recovery, is the substance of what he teaches. Before Iraq, Collins served eight years in 22 SAS, including as Operations Officer, and led troops through Northern Ireland, the Falklands, and Cyprus. The earlier work shapes how he talks about selection, small-team trust, and what actually holds a unit together when the plan fails. His memoir Rules of Engagement (Headline, 2006) is the long-form version. Since retiring from the army in 2004 he has built New Century Consulting, an intelligence-led security firm working largely with government, and become a regular commentator on defence and security in the UK national press. The corporate keynote work draws on all of it: the command experience, the public scrutiny, the second career building a business with a payroll and contracts. Key speaking topics Command leadership under pressure Leadership communication in high-stakes moments Small-team performance and trust Decision-making with incomplete information Accountability and the weight of command Resilience after public scrutiny Lessons from operational command for civilian leaders Ideal for CEOs, executive committees, and divisional MDs preparing teams for high-stakes operational moments Leadership development programmes for newly senior leaders taking on command-level accountability Sales and operations conferences where the central leadership question is composure under pressure Board offsites focused on crisis readiness, succession, or the human side of restructure Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what leadership communication actually does in the moment that counts. Practical handles on composure, accountability, and team trust, drawn from command experience rather than theory. A more honest reading of what holds a team together when the plan changes. A reference point, the eve-of-battle speech, that audiences carry back into their own leadership conversations.

Why organisations work with Tim Bouverie A prize-winning historian whose two books, Appeasing Hitler and the Duff Cooper Prize-winning Allies at War, sit on exactly the questions boards now face: when to confront, when to compromise, and how to hold a fragile coalition together. Trained as a political journalist at Channel 4 News under Michael Crick, so the material is delivered as argument and narrative, not lecture. Brings a specific, named angle on negotiation: the Big Three at Tehran and Yalta as a working case study for M&A, joint ventures and competitive collaboration. Comfortable in serious rooms. Has interviewed George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson on stage at the Chalke Valley History Festival, and lectures regularly across the UK and US, including at the Hoover Institution. An Oxford-trained historian (Christ Church, Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony’s) whose readership includes Max Hastings, Antony Beevor and Margaret MacMillan, all of whom have publicly endorsed the work. Biography highlights Author of Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War (Bodley Head, 2019), Sunday Times bestseller, Orwell Prize shortlist. Author of Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler (Bodley Head), winner of the 2026 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize. Christ Church, Oxford. 2020-21 Alistair Horne Visiting Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford. Political journalist at Channel 4 News, 2013-2017, working with Michael Crick on Dispatches and covering two general elections, the Scottish referendum and the EU referendum. Regular contributor of book reviews on history and politics to the Spectator, the Observer and the Daily Telegraph. Speaker and interviewer at the Chalke Valley History Festival and at the Hoover Institution, with public sessions alongside George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson. Biography The diplomatic record of the 1930s is one of the best-documented examples of senior decision-makers misreading a hostile counterparty. It is also one of the most relevant to today’s boardroom. Tim Bouverie’s first book, Appeasing Hitler, took that record apart in detail, working from cabinet papers, private diaries and Foreign Office files to show how a generation of competent, well-informed leaders talked themselves into a strategic disaster. The book became a Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. His second, Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler, drew on more than a hundred archives to reconstruct the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin coalition as the brittle, mistrustful negotiation it actually was. It won the 2026 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, one of the most credited awards in narrative non-fiction. The training behind the work matters to a corporate audience. Bouverie read history at Christ Church, Oxford, and held the 2020-21 Alistair Horne Visiting Fellowship at St Antony’s College. Before the books, he spent four and a half years as a political journalist at Channel 4 News, working with Michael Crick across two general elections and the Scottish and EU referendums. The combination shows up in the keynotes: archival depth, delivered with a working journalist’s instinct for argument. On stage he is a fluent interviewer as well as a lecturer, having questioned George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson at the Chalke Valley History Festival, and presented at the Hoover Institution and at festivals across the United States. The signature talks pull directly from the books: appeasement as a study in strategic miscalculation, and the Big Three as a working manual on how to negotiate inside an alliance you cannot afford to walk away from. Key speaking topics Lessons from appeasement and strategic miscalculation Alliance management and coalition negotiation Leadership decisions under geopolitical pressure Diplomatic history of the Second World War The fragility of the rules-based order Negotiation in M&A, joint ventures and competitive collaboration Narrative history and archival research Ideal for Board and ExCo offsites focused on geopolitical risk and long-horizon strategy CEO and senior leadership audiences negotiating major partnerships, alliances or M&A Heads of strategy, government affairs and corporate affairs working on sanctions, China exposure and political risk After-dinner audiences at industry conferences where intellectual seriousness is part of the brief Audience outcomes A sharper read on how senior leaders misjudge hostile counterparties, with named historical examples that stick. Specific lessons from the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin alliance applicable to coalition negotiations today. A historical frame for current debates on the rules-based order, sanctions and Western unity that goes beyond the news cycle. A model for how to use evidence and narrative together when communicating high-stakes decisions internally.

Why organisations work with Steven Pinker His argument that human cognitive biases – availability, confirmation, narrative distortion – are not random errors but predictable and correctable patterns gives organisations a diagnostic framework that most behavioural science speakers only gesture towards. The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now provide leaders with a rigorously evidenced counterweight to crisis-driven decision-making: a data-grounded case for long-run institutional progress that challenges the assumption that things are categorically worse than before. Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters grew out of a Harvard course on reasoning, and offers organisations a structured, named toolkit – logic, Bayesian probability, causal inference, game theory – applied directly to the kinds of collective judgments institutions face. His work on language and common knowledge (the study of what people know that others know they know) gives communicators and senior leaders rare analytical precision about why messaging fails, why consensus breaks down, and how shared understanding is actually constructed. Recognised by the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award and elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Pinker brings a level of peer-validated scholarly authority that very few public-facing intellectuals in this space can match. Biography highlights Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; faculty career spanning Harvard, MIT (1982–2003), and Stanford Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2016) Author of thirteen books, including The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences (shared with Peter Singer) William James Book Prize (three times); Los Angeles Times Science Book Prize; Cundill Recognition of Excellence in History Award Ranked by Academic Influence as the second most influential psychologist in the world, 2010–2020 Regular contributor to The New York Times, Time, and The Atlantic; named to Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and Foreign Policy‘s 100 Global Thinkers Biography Organisations that operate in complex, information-saturated environments face a specific and underappreciated failure mode: not a shortage of data, but a systematic distortion in how that data is processed. Leaders overweight vivid recent events, underweight statistical baselines, and build strategy around narratives that feel coherent rather than evidence that is reliable. The cognitive science underlying these failures is well-documented – but rarely applied with rigour inside institutions. Steven Pinker has spent four decades studying the mechanisms of language, reasoning, and human cognition at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. His research is not popularised work drawn from others’ findings: it is original experimental scholarship in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and the psychology of social relations, conducted at the Johnstone Family Chair in Harvard’s Department of Psychology. What distinguishes his public work is the consistent application of that scientific foundation to questions that organisations – and civilisations – actually face. His most argued books form a coherent intellectual project. The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) used historical data across centuries to make the case that violence and conflict have declined measurably – not as opinion, but as documented empirical fact – and identified the institutional and psychological forces responsible. Enlightenment Now (2018) extended that analysis across all major indicators of human welfare, arguing that reason, science, and Enlightenment institutions remain the engines of progress. Rationality (2021) turned the lens directly onto decision-making: what cognitive tools are required to think clearly, why they are rarely applied, and how organisations and democracies can build structures that reason more reliably. The book emerged from a course Pinker teaches at Harvard and addresses logic, Bayesian probability, causal inference, and game theory as practical instruments for institutional judgment. Recognised by the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences – for contributions to the understanding of human rationality and progress that have entered the mainstream of public debate – and elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Pinker occupies a rare position: a research scientist whose work is directly legible to senior leaders grappling with the quality of organisational reasoning and the reliability of their own institutions. Key speaking topics Cognitive biases and institutional decision-making Rationality and evidence-based reasoning Language, communication, and common knowledge The psychology and history of violence Enlightenment values and organisational progress Human nature and social behaviour Clarity and effectiveness in professional communication Ideal for C-suite and board audiences wrestling with strategic decision-making under uncertainty Policy, government, and public affairs leadership Strategy, risk, and scenario planning functions Executive development and leadership faculty programmes Audience outcomes A working understanding of how specific cognitive biases – availability, confirmation, narrative distortion – shape organisational decisions, and what structures can correct them A data-grounded framework for assessing long-run institutional and societal progress, reducing reliance on media-driven perception of perpetual crisis Practical reasoning tools from logic, probability, and causal inference, applied to the kinds of collective judgments senior leaders actually face Greater precision about how language shapes shared understanding – and why institutional communication so often fails to build the common knowledge it intends A clearer sense of where human nature helps and where it hinders, grounded in evolutionary psychology rather than management metaphor

Why organisations work with Steve Richards Decades of first-hand interviews with serving and former prime ministers, ministers and senior advisers, which is the basis of an Atlantic Books trilogy on leadership in Number 10 rather than political history written from a distance. A leadership lens on government that translates directly into corporate questions about succession, executive isolation, decision-making under public scrutiny, and the gap between strategy and execution. Editorial credibility built across the New Statesman, The Independent, The Guardian and BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster, which gives boards and policy audiences a commentator they already trust. A genuine performer’s command of a room, developed across a decade of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Politics one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe, which makes him as effective chairing a senior dinner as delivering a keynote. Biography highlights Political Editor of the New Statesman, then Chief Political Commentator at The Independent and Independent on Sunday from 2000. Regular presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster, with BBC television series on Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. Author of The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to Johnson, Atlantic Books. Author of The Prime Ministers We Never Had: Success and Failure from Butler to Corbyn, Atlantic Books. Author of Turning Points: Crisis and Change in Modern Britain, from 1945 to Truss, Macmillan, named in The Times Best Politics and Current Affairs Books of the Year. Creator and performer of Rock ‘n’ Roll Politics, a touring stage show and podcast that ran for ten consecutive years at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Biography The most useful evidence on leadership under pressure sits in government, where the same individuals can be observed across cabinet, opposition and crisis, often with the receipts public. Steve Richards has spent his career inside that material. As Political Editor of the New Statesman and then Chief Political Commentator at The Independent, he conducted long-form interviews with most living UK prime ministers and the people who advised them. That body of work became a leadership trilogy with Atlantic Books. The Prime Ministers reads ten occupants of Number 10 from Wilson to Johnson against the same questions: what they understood about power before they had it, what they did with the institution once they were inside, and why most of them ended badly. The Prime Ministers We Never Had applies the same lens to the figures who came close, including Butler, Healey and Corbyn. Turning Points, published by Macmillan in 2023, was named in The Times Best Politics and Current Affairs Books of the Year and steps further back, to ten moments that reshaped post-war Britain. On stage, Richards is unusual among British political commentators. He has built Rock ‘n’ Roll Politics into a touring one-man show and podcast that ran for ten consecutive years at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The performance discipline travels: he chairs senior dinners and conferences with a journalist’s command of evidence and a stand-up’s command of a room. For corporate audiences, the value is translation. Cabinet government is an unusually rich case study in executive constraint, succession, advisory teams that work and do not, and the limits of personal authority under public scrutiny. Richards moves between Westminster and the boardroom without losing the specificity that makes the analysis useful. Key speaking topics UK political leadership and prime ministerial power The executive under public scrutiny Outsider movements and political disruption Post-war turning points and political change in Britain Number 10 advisory teams and decision-making Media, message and political communication Ideal for Boards and executive committees seeking analytical commentary on UK political risk and leadership transitions CEOs, chairs and advisers studying succession, executive isolation and decision-making under scrutiny Public affairs, policy and government relations leaders Senior dinners, partner conferences and chaired panels where credibility and command of a room matter equally Audience outcomes A clearer reading of how UK political power actually flows around Number 10, and what that means for forecasting policy direction A leadership case framework drawn from real prime ministerial successes and failures, applicable to corporate succession and executive transitions A sharper sense of why outsider politics keeps disrupting the centre, and how organisations should price that risk A view of post-war turning points that puts current volatility into longer-cycle perspective

Why organisations work with Stephen Sackur Access to a perspective built across nearly four decades of frontline reporting, from the Gulf War and the fall of the Berlin Wall to two decades of adversarial interviews with presidents, prime ministers, and heads of international institutions, that cannot be replicated by analysts working from secondary sources. A forensic, barristerial framework for examining how leaders think and deflect under pressure, drawn from nearly 20 years presenting HARDtalk to audiences in over 200 countries, that translates directly into sharper boardroom questioning and more rigorous scenario analysis. Timely relevance: his forthcoming book Hard Truth (Headline Press, 2026) addresses disinformation, authoritarian political power, and the fight to preserve truth-telling institutions, the precise threats organisations are being asked to assess and respond to now. The ability to moderate high-stakes discussions at board or senior leadership level with the structural discipline of a trained interviewer, not merely facilitating, but drawing out what participants actually believe rather than what they intend to say. Credibility built through direct engagement with the figures who shape geopolitical risk, including Hugo Chávez, Alexei Navalny, Emmanuel Macron, Christine Lagarde, and Bill Clinton, giving his analysis a texture that is absent from most expert commentary. Biography highlights Presented BBC HARDtalk for 19 years (2005–2025), conducting in-depth accountability interviews with heads of state and global leaders broadcast across more than 200 countries 15 years as a BBC foreign correspondent, based in Cairo, Jerusalem, Brussels, and Washington DC; covered the Gulf War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, and 9/11 First correspondent to report the mass killing on the Basra road at the end of the Gulf War; author of On the Basra Road (1991), named a Spectator Book of the Year Named International TV Personality of the Year (Television) by the Association for International Broadcasting, 2010; nominated Speech Broadcaster of the Year, Sony Radio Awards, 2013 Honorary Doctorate, University of Warwick (2018); Henry Fellow, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; BA History (Hons), Emmanuel College, Cambridge Contributor to The Observer, London Review of Books, New Statesman, The Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph; currently presenter of The Times at One, Times Radio Under contract with Headline Press for Hard Truth: 10 Investigations That Shook the World – and Why They Matter Now (due September 2026) Biography When organisations need to understand how geopolitical risk is constructed as the product of decisions made by identifiable people operating under specific pressures, they are looking for something that most commentary cannot supply: direct, structured, adversarial engagement with the people who make those decisions. That is the experience Stephen Sackur brings. As the presenter of BBC HARDtalk from 2005 to 2025, Sackur conducted in-depth accountability interviews with figures including Hugo Chávez, Emmanuel Macron, Alexei Navalny, Christine Lagarde, and Bill Clinton that reached audiences across more than 200 countries. The programme’s defining characteristic was not access but interrogation: a forensic, evidence-based questioning method that was designed to surface what leaders believe rather than what they wish to project. Over nearly two decades, this produced an unusually detailed map of how power operates, deflects, and occasionally fractures under scrutiny. Before HARDtalk, Sackur spent 15 years as a BBC foreign correspondent in Cairo, Jerusalem, Brussels, and Washington DC. He reported on the Gulf War, the Velvet Revolution, the collapse of the peace process in the Middle East, and the political crises of the Clinton era. His 1991 book On the Basra Road, which emerged from being the first correspondent to report the mass killing of retreating Iraqi forces at the end of the Gulf War, was named a Spectator Book of the Year and established the analytical seriousness that has characterised his work since. His forthcoming book Hard Truth: 10 Investigations That Shook the World – and Why They Matter Now (Headline Press, September 2026) makes the case for investigative journalism as a democratic safeguard against disinformation, authoritarian capture, and institutional erosion. Educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Sackur now presents The Times at One on Times Radio and works regularly with international forums and senior leadership audiences as a moderator and speaker on geopolitics, accountability, and the anatomy of power. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and global power dynamics Political risk and democratic accountability Leadership under pressure and public scrutiny The media’s role in holding institutions to account Disinformation and the future of truth-telling High-stakes questioning and structured decision-making International affairs: Middle East, US politics, European security Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership teams seeking structured geopolitical context rather than generic risk briefings Risk, strategy, and government affairs functions in international financial services, energy, and professional services firms Senior leadership conferences where geopolitical volatility, democratic risk, or institutional trust is on the agenda Organisations seeking a high-calibre moderator for multi-stakeholder panels on international affairs or governance Audience outcomes A clearer framework for distinguishing genuine geopolitical signal from media and political noise Insight into how senior political leaders actually think and behave when their positions are challenged, and what that reveals about institutional resilience A more rigorous vocabulary for assessing democratic risk, disinformation threats, and the erosion of accountability structures that underpin stable operating environments Practical understanding of how adversarial questioning works as a leadership and governance tool, applicable to board effectiveness, media engagement, and stakeholder management A grounded, non-sensationalised view of geopolitical risk derived from direct engagement with many of the figures who have shaped it

Why organisations work with Sohail Rahman More than 30 years across ITV, Granada, BBC, Channel 4, CNN and Al Jazeera English, which is a breadth of senior broadcast experience most corporate hosts cannot match. He was part of the original on-screen launch line-up for Al Jazeera English in 2005 and has anchored from Doha for two decades, giving him recognised standing across the Middle East, South Asia and Asia-Pacific. His correspondent postings in New Delhi and Kuala Lumpur were not studio work. They included access to places most correspondents do not reach, including North-West Pakistan’s tribal areas, which gives his geopolitical material front-line credibility. The awards record is specific: Royal Television Society Best Television Presenter in 2003 and a USA TV Emmy nomination for the Nepal Earthquake coverage. These are external markers of presentation quality rather than vanity listings. Fluency in five South Asian languages in addition to English makes him unusually useful for events in South Asia, GCC and South-East Asia where a host who understands cultural nuance materially affects how the room receives the content. Biography highlights Main presenter, Al Jazeera English, Doha; part of the 2005 on-screen launch line-up Former Al Jazeera Senior Correspondent for South Asia (New Delhi) and Asia Pacific (Kuala Lumpur) Previous networks include ITV, ITV Granada, BBC, Channel 4 and CNN Royal Television Society Best Television Presenter Award (2003); USA TV Emmy nomination for Nepal Earthquake coverage First British Muslim man to present ITV National News and ITV Granada regional news Fluent in five South Asian languages and English Biography Al Jazeera English went on air in 2005 as one of the most ambitious international news launches in a generation, and Sohail Rahman was part of the original on-screen team. Two decades later he remains a main anchor at the network’s Doha headquarters, having also spent postings as Senior Correspondent for South Asia from New Delhi and for Asia Pacific from Kuala Lumpur. The roles put him directly into the stories that now frame international business risk, from Asian elections and natural disasters to conflict on the Afghan-Pakistan border. His earlier career sits with the UK networks. More than 30 years across ITV, Granada, BBC, Channel 4 and CNN include a period as an ITV national news presenter, where he was the first British Muslim man to hold the role, and earlier Granada regional news anchoring. In 2003 he won the Royal Television Society’s Best Television Presenter Award for his ITV work. He later received a USA TV Emmy nomination for his coverage of the Nepal Earthquake. The correspondent experience is specific rather than general. He was one of the few international reporters granted access to North-West Pakistan’s tribal areas, including Swat, and filed on militancy and governance from those regions at a time when few Western broadcasters could. Fluency in five South Asian languages means his reporting and hosting in the region is not mediated through translators, which in turn gives him a register that regional audiences recognise as genuine. For international conferences, GCC summits, South Asian business events and investor-facing programmes with Asia or Middle East exposure, Rahman brings the combination most organisers actually want: a recognised Al Jazeera anchor, a Royal Television Society award holder, and a correspondent who has filed from the places the audience is otherwise only reading about. He is used for main-stage moderation, awards hosting, MC work and keynote interviews. Key speaking topics Middle East and Gulf geopolitics South Asian and Asia-Pacific current affairs International business, economics and global markets Media, journalism and cross-cultural communication Muslim representation and identity in Western media Hosting, moderating and awards MC craft Ideal for GCC, Middle East and Asia-based conferences, investor days and trade summits International awards and industry events needing a globally recognised anchor as host Corporate off-sites, client events and fireside interviews focused on Middle East and Asia risk Cultural, faith and representation events where a senior British Muslim broadcaster’s voice is relevant Audience outcomes A sharper read on Middle East and Asian geopolitics delivered by a serving Al Jazeera anchor Sessions that move from prepared remarks into genuine interview under a broadcast-grade host Specific front-line reference cases from South Asia, Asia Pacific and the tribal areas of Pakistan A host who can move credibly between English and South Asian languages in mixed international rooms