Storytelling & Business Communication speakers

Why organisations work with Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian She built the experience function at WeTransfer from inside the executive team across ten years, a rare track record of innovation craft sustained at commercial scale rather than delivered as one-off consulting. She has a method for staging ideas in public, tested at the scale of a 17,500-seat Hollywood Bowl performance with NASA scientists and at the scale of small-room design studios at Google, Mattel and Unilever. Her academic foundation is unusual for a creative director: a PhD in Human Geography and Political Philosophy from Royal Holloway alongside an RCA Design Interactions MA, which gives her work argumentative spine rather than spectacle alone. She runs the University of the Underground, a tuition-free postgraduate institution whose advisory board includes Noam Chomsky, Paola Antonelli and Jill Tarter, so she arrives in a room with an active network of researchers and practitioners across science, design and politics. Design Week inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2023 alongside Jonathan Ive, Es Devlin and Neville Brody, the field’s most explicit signal that her practice has moved from emerging to canonical. Biography highlights Chief of Experiences at WeTransfer from 2012 to 2022, ten years on the executive team during the company’s growth into a global creative platform. Founder and director of the University of the Underground, a tuition-free MA programme hosted at Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Designer of Experiences at the SETI Institute since 2013; Vice Chair of the IAF Committee for the Cultural Utilisation of Space. Founder and director of the International Space Orchestra, performed with Sigur Ros at the Hollywood Bowl to 17,500 people. PhD, Royal Holloway, University of London (Human Geography and Political Philosophy); MA, Royal College of Art (Design Interactions, Dunne and Raby). Design Week Awards Hall of Fame, 2023. WIRED Innovation Fellowship, 2014. Karman Fellowship, 2022. Arts Council England Exceptional Award for Disaster Playground. Biography Most companies treat innovation as an internal practice: research teams, pilots, internal demos, the occasional product launch. The harder discipline is staging an idea so that customers, staff and the broader public feel it. Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian has spent fifteen years building a method for that second discipline, first inside a scaling technology company, then as a commissioned director for brands and cultural institutions. She joined WeTransfer in 2012 as its first Head of Experiences and stayed for a decade, eventually serving as Chief of Experiences on the executive team. Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios operated inside WeTransfer as its user experience and innovation department, with a remit that grew from public projects with creative communities to B Corp development, US business expansion, and the founding of the editorial platform WePresent and the University of the Underground. Her parallel practice is anchored by the International Space Orchestra, which she founded in 2012 with scientists and astronauts from NASA Ames, the SETI Institute and the International Space University. The project produced a feature film, a Hollywood Bowl performance with Sigur Ros, and a recording that was played from the International Space Station. It is the clearest example of her core craft, which is the orchestration of scientific and institutional collaborators into something a non-expert audience can feel. In 2017 she founded the University of the Underground, a tuition-free postgraduate programme at Sandberg Instituut whose advisory board includes Noam Chomsky, Paola Antonelli and Jill Tarter. Design Week inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2023 alongside Jonathan Ive, Es Devlin and Neville Brody. Key speaking topics Immersive experiences as innovation practice Building creative communities inside commercial organisations Public-facing storytelling for science and technology Cultural strategy and brand Interdisciplinary collaboration across science, design and the arts Space culture and the public communication of complex science Independent institution building Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Brand Officers and creative directors at consumer or technology brands looking to move from advertising-led growth to experience-led growth. Heads of Innovation and Chief Strategy Officers whose pilots are not translating into customer-visible products or cultural relevance. Cultural institutions, design and architecture studios, and science communication leads commissioning ambitious public projects. Senior leadership teams inside scale-up technology companies considering how to build a brand that creators and partners care about. Audience outcomes A working definition of what an experience function does inside a commercial company, drawn from ten years of operating one at WeTransfer. Concrete patterns for staging an idea publicly, from Hollywood Bowl scale down to a small studio activation. A view of how scientific institutions, creative communities and commercial brands can be brought into the same room without flattening any of them. A reading on where the experience economy is heading, grounded in her current work at SETI, the International Astronautical Federation and the University of the Underground.

Why organisations work with Nicholas Owen A hard-news anchor pedigree built on News at Ten, Channel 4 News and ITV Lunchtime News, which gives him the authority to chair regulated, high-stakes and politically sensitive sessions without losing the room. A documented track record on serious scientific and medical platforms, including the European Society of Cardiology and the European Haematology Association, where clinical accuracy and pacing matter as much as presence. Royal Television Society award-winning reporting credentials from his years as ITN Royal Correspondent, which translate into a calm, considered interview style suited to senior leaders and high-profile guests. After-dinner range built over fifty years in journalism and still in active demand, drawing on the memoir Days Like This, with material that works for City audiences, charity galas and trade dinners alike. Charity-sector credibility through long-standing Ambassador roles with The Prince’s Trust and The Children’s Trust, useful when the event has a philanthropic dimension that needs handling with care. Biography highlights Anchor of ITV’s News at Ten, Channel 4 News and ITV Lunchtime News across more than two decades at ITN. ITN Royal Correspondent 1994 to 2000; central to ITN’s RTS Award-winning coverage of the death and funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Channel 4 News Business and Economics Correspondent, following seven years at the Financial Times and earlier roles at the Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph. BBC News presenter from 2007; main relief presenter for BBC Weekend News on BBC One and the BBC News Channel. Author of Diana: The People’s Princess (Carlton Books) and the memoir Days Like This (Blenheim Press). Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Brighton (2015); Ambassador for The Prince’s Trust and The Children’s Trust. Biography A live audience programme is harder than a news bulletin. The autocue is gone, the running order will slip, and the chair has to interview a CEO, a clinician and a winner in the same hour without losing pace. Nicholas Owen has done versions of that job, on air and on stage, for the better part of fifty years. His broadcast record runs from the Surrey Mirror in 1964 through Fleet Street (Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph, seven years at the Financial Times), into BBC North East in 1981 and then ITN from 1984. At ITN he anchored News at Ten, Channel 4 News and ITV Lunchtime News, served as Business and Economics Correspondent on Channel 4 News, and presented Midnight Special during the First Gulf War. He rejoined the BBC in 2007 as a presenter on BBC News and the BBC News Channel. The work that defined his public profile was the ITN Royal Correspondent role he held from 1994 to 2000. He was central to ITN’s coverage of the death and funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, for which ITN received a Royal Television Society Award. He later wrote Diana: The People’s Princess for Carlton Books, and his own memoir Days Like This in 2012. Corporate buyers hire him for the craft built across those decades: chairing industry conferences and awards ceremonies, moderating international medical congresses including the European Society of Cardiology and the European Haematology Association, and handling question time sessions and after-dinner programmes for City and charity audiences. The University of Brighton awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2015 for his journalism and his charity work as Ambassador for The Prince’s Trust and The Children’s Trust. He remains on air, presenting on Classic FM and contributing to radio and television. Key speaking topics Conference hosting and chairing Awards ceremony presenting Panel moderation and question time Medical and scientific congress facilitation After-dinner speaking and corporate entertainment Broadcast journalism and the Royal story Economic trends and business news interviewing Ideal for Corporate awards organisers and trade body event leads commissioning a known broadcast face to chair the night. Conference programme directors at medical, scientific and financial industry congresses needing a chair who can handle technical content with clinical pacing. Heads of internal communications running senior leadership town halls, AGMs and results events that need a steady external presence. Charity and foundation event leads where Ambassador-level fluency in Prince’s Trust and Children’s Trust subject matter adds value. Audience outcomes A programme that runs to time, handles overruns cleanly and keeps senior speakers in their slots. Interviews with panellists and award winners that draw out something memorable rather than reading the brief back at them. A host who can move between a serious clinical session, a corporate prize-giving and an after-dinner address in the same event week. An audience that leaves with the sense that the event was professionally held, not merely populated.

Why organisations work with Nick Ferrari A daily live audience of more than a million listeners on LBC means the interviewing reflex is current, not nostalgic. The questions land because they were sharpened that morning. Thirty years inside national news, from The Sun and the Daily Mirror to the launch of Sky News and Fox TV in New York, gives him a working knowledge of how organisations get covered and where their messaging breaks. Sony Radio Academy Awards for Breakfast Show of the Year and Speech Broadcaster of the Year are external markers of broadcasting craft, not bureau adjectives. He is comfortable with contested material. Politicians, regulators and CEOs have all sat across from him on air, which is the relevant experience for chairing a panel where audiences expect more than sponsor-friendly questions. Biography highlights Presenter, Nick Ferrari at Breakfast, LBC (since 2004; first LBC breakfast slot in 2001) Launch Editor, Sky News, 1989 Vice President of News and Programming, Fox TV, New York Sony Radio Academy Award, Breakfast Show of the Year, 2006 Sony Speech Broadcaster of the Year, 2009; Arqiva Breakfast Show of the Year, 2010 Former editor of The Sun’s Bizarre column and Deputy Editor of the Daily Mirror Biography National breakfast radio is the hardest live format on British media. Three hours, five days a week, with politicians, regulators, listeners on the line and no script. Nick Ferrari has held the LBC breakfast slot since 2004 and has been awarded Sony Radio Academy honours including Breakfast Show of the Year in 2006 and Speech Broadcaster of the Year in 2009. The journalism behind the broadcasting is unusually broad. Ferrari was Launch Editor of Sky News in 1989, then Vice President of News and Programming at Fox TV in New York. Before that he edited The Sun’s Bizarre column and was Deputy Editor of the Daily Mirror. The sequence matters for organisations: he has run rooms in tabloid Fleet Street, in start-up television and in network American news, and knows how each treats a corporate story. That background is what makes him useful in front of a corporate audience. He chairs panels with regulators, ministers and chief executives without slipping into either deference or grandstanding. He hosts award dinners with the timing of a daily presenter rather than a guest speaker. The reason organisations book him is not access to a thesis; it is access to an interviewer who knows how to keep a senior panel honest and a room awake. Key speaking topics Conference hosting and chairing Panel moderation with senior public figures After-dinner speaking and corporate awards hosting Broadcasting and journalism Media, politics and current affairs Interviewing and on-stage Q&A Ideal for Annual conferences and senior leadership offsites that need a chair, not a keynote Corporate award dinners and gala evenings looking for a known broadcaster as host Regulator, financial services and public-sector events with politically sensitive panels Internal town halls or executive forums where leaders need to be interviewed in front of staff Audience outcomes A panel that produces real answers rather than rehearsed lines, because the chair pushes back An evening or conference paced with broadcast timing, on the clock and on the brief Senior executives interviewed in a way that feels credible to staff, journalists and clients in the room A host the audience already knows from national radio, which lifts the perceived authority of the agenda

Why organisations work with Nick Hendrix A recognisable face from one of ITV’s longest-running primetime dramas, which gives award ceremonies, gala dinners and brand events an immediate sense of occasion. Live theatre training at RADA and on West End stages, which translates directly into clean autocue delivery, audience reading and recovery when an agenda slips. Comfort across formats: scripted keynote interview, awards script, panel moderation and after-dinner. The same person can run the evening end to end without a second host. A second professional life as an automotive journalist for the Financial Times’ How To Spend It, Square Mile and SPEARS, with brand work for Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, McLaren and Mercedes. Useful for luxury, automotive and lifestyle audiences. A substantive talk on confidence, rejection and sustaining performance through career volatility, available when the brief calls for content beyond hosting. Biography highlights RADA-trained actor, BA in acting, 2010, following a BA in drama from the University of Exeter. Plays DS Jamie Winter in ITV’s Midsomer Murders, his ongoing role since 2016. Stage credits include male lead Prince Digby in The Light Princess at the Royal National Theatre, plus work at The Old Vic and West End productions including What The Butler Saw at the Vaudeville. Film credits include Captain America: The First Avenger, Suffragette, Legend and Red Tails. Television credits include The Crown, Black Mirror, Call the Midwife, Foyle’s War, Silk and Marcella. Co-founder of DRIVEN, an automotive journalism company, with bylines in the Financial Times’ How To Spend It, Square Mile and SPEARS, and commercial work with Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, McLaren and Mercedes. Biography A working actor’s career is built on repeated rejection. For every part won there are dozens lost, and the craft of staying available, composed and credible across that volatility is closer to a corporate audience’s daily reality than it first appears. Hendrix has spent thirteen years inside that discipline, on a primetime ITV set, on West End stages, and in front of live audiences who give no second chances. Trained at RADA after a drama degree at Exeter, he has played DS Jamie Winter in ITV’s Midsomer Murders since 2016, alongside stage work at the National, The Old Vic and the West End. Screen credits include Captain America: The First Avenger, Suffragette, Legend, The Crown and Black Mirror. The body of work is broad enough to give an event audience an immediate point of recognition. A second career runs in parallel. Hendrix co-founded DRIVEN, an automotive journalism venture, and writes for the Financial Times’ How To Spend It, Square Mile and SPEARS. That work has produced commercial relationships with Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, McLaren and Mercedes, which gives him a working fluency with luxury, automotive and lifestyle brand audiences that few hosts can match. On stage at an event he leans on the obvious tools of his trade: a trained voice, accurate scripted delivery, a feel for pace and a willingness to improvise when an agenda moves. When the brief is content rather than hosting, his subject is the practical economy of confidence and resilience inside a career that has no fixed salary or guaranteed next job. Key speaking topics Awards hosting and event mastering of ceremonies Panel moderation and on-stage interviewing Confidence and performance under pressure Mental health and wellbeing in volatile careers Resilience through repeated rejection Luxury automotive and lifestyle brand engagement Ideal for Awards ceremonies, gala dinners and brand events that need a recognisable on-camera host Marketing, communications and brand teams in luxury, automotive and lifestyle sectors Conference programmes that need a polished panel moderator across the day Employee experience and wellbeing programmes looking for a recognisable, non-clinical voice on confidence and pressure Audience outcomes A clearly run evening or conference day, with an autocue-fluent host who keeps time and recovers cleanly when things move A concrete account of how performers manage live-performance pressure, told without self-help framing A working perspective on confidence as a trained habit, not a personality trait A relevant cultural reference point for luxury, automotive and lifestyle brand audiences

Why organisations work with Nicola Green She brings firsthand observation of how power, identity and leadership operate at the highest level, drawn from sustained artistic access to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Jonathan Sacks. Her work is held in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress and the Obama Presidential Center, which gives any inclusion conversation she leads an authority that consultancy-led sessions cannot match. She treats allyship as a discipline with daily behaviours, not as a values statement, which lands with senior leaders who are tired of slogans and want something they can act on. She founded the Khadija Saye Arts Programme and co-founded the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, so the institution-building she talks about is institution-building she has actually done. Biography highlights Co-founder and director, Diaspora Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale (2017), with David A. Bailey, David Lammy and Peter Clayton. In Seven Days…, her artistic record of the 2008 Obama campaign, is held by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the Obama Presidential Center and the UK Government Art Collection. Encounters, a fifty-portrait series with Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Justin Welby, Jonathan Sacks, Ali Gomaa and Desmond Tutu, exhibited at St Martin-in-the-Fields; book published by Brepols. Founder, Khadija Saye Arts Programme at IntoUniversity, addressing underrepresentation of Black and minority ethnic communities in the creative industries. Principal Artist on The World Reimagined, a UK-wide public art project on racial justice and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. Co-founder and Chair, Sophia Point Rainforest Research Centre, Guyana. Biography Allyship has become one of the most used and least understood words in the workplace. Many leaders have signed up to it in principle while still being unsure what it asks of them in practice. Green’s work begins in that gap. Drawing on a decade of direct access to the figures who define modern leadership and faith, she treats allyship as something senior leaders do, not something they declare. Her portrait series In Seven Days… documented Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign from the Democratic Convention through to the inauguration. Sets are held by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress and the Obama Presidential Center. A second body of work, Encounters, sat her across the table from Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Justin Welby and Jonathan Sacks. The accompanying book, Encounters: The Art of Interfaith Dialogue, was published by Brepols. Beyond the studio, Green has built institutions for the conversation she leads on stage. She co-founded the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, featuring twenty-two artists from culturally diverse backgrounds, and founded the Khadija Saye Arts Programme at IntoUniversity in memory of her mentee, the artist Khadija Saye, who died in the Grenfell Tower fire. As Principal Artist on The World Reimagined, she created public work confronting the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade across the UK. For senior teams, the value is that Green has spent twenty years studying how leaders actually behave around questions of identity, power and faith. She does not arrive with a framework borrowed from elsewhere. She arrives with primary observation, recorded in works that now sit inside the national collections of two countries. Key speaking topics Allyship as leadership practice Identity, race and power in organisations Inclusive leadership Visual storytelling and narrative change Diversity in the creative industries Representation and institution-building Interfaith dialogue and leadership Ideal for Chief executives, CHROs and DEI leads rebuilding inclusion strategy after the post-2020 backlash. Boards and executive committees setting tone on identity, representation and culture. Senior leadership conferences in financial services, professional services, media and the public sector. Cultural institutions, universities and faith-based organisations working on representation and access. Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of allyship, expressed as behaviours leaders can hold each other to. A direct view of how high-stakes leaders, political and religious, handle identity and power in practice. A sharper sense of how visual culture and representation shape what an organisation looks like from the outside. Practical reference points for inclusion work that has stalled or lost credibility internally.

Why organisations work with Nicole Bearne A continuous twenty-five-year vantage point inside one Formula One team, from founding member of British American Racing in 1998 to Head of Internal Communications at Mercedes-AMG Petronas through its run of consecutive Constructors’ Championships. Few practitioners in this field have anywhere near that depth of single-environment experience. Reported directly to Team Principal Ross Brawn between 2007 and 2013, including the 2009 Brawn GP season that delivered both world titles in the team’s first and only year of existence and is the subject of the 2023 Disney+ documentary Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story. Built and led the Internal Communications function at Mercedes-AMG Petronas from scratch within a 1,300-person engineering organisation operating across multiple UK sites and racing every fortnight. MSc in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck, University of London, and a CIPR Diploma in Internal Communications. Few practitioners with comparable F1 operational experience hold formal qualifications in organisational psychology. Independent Non-Executive Director at Motorsport UK and Chair of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee, adding a board-level governance perspective to the operational track record. Biography highlights Head of Internal Communications, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, for approximately a decade through a sustained period of world championship success. Executive Assistant to Team Principal Ross Brawn (2007 to 2013), covering Honda Racing F1, the 2009 Brawn GP championship year, and the Mercedes acquisition. Founding member of British American Racing Formula One Team in 1998. Independent Non-Executive Director at Motorsport UK and Chair of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee. MSc in Organisational Behaviour, Birkbeck, University of London; CIPR Diploma in Internal Communications; Member of CIPR (MCIPR); Accredited PR Practitioner. Founder and Director of The Comms Exchange Ltd; featured in the 2023 Disney+ documentary Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story. Biography Inside Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, internal communications is treated as a performance variable. The function exists to make sure that 1,300 people across multiple sites act on the same strategy at the same time, every race weekend. That is the environment Nicole Bearne worked inside for 25 years. She was a founding member of British American Racing in 1998 and stayed through the team’s transitions to Honda Racing F1, Brawn GP and Mercedes-AMG Petronas. Between 2007 and 2013 she was Executive Assistant to Team Principal Ross Brawn. That tenure included the 2009 season when Brawn GP took both world titles in its first and only year of existence. She then built the Internal Communications function at Mercedes-AMG Petronas from scratch and led it for the next decade. She operated at board level through a period in which the team won eight consecutive Constructors’ Championships. Her academic grounding sits alongside that operational experience: an MSc in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck and the CIPR Diploma in Internal Communications. Today she runs The Comms Exchange, advising organisations on internal communications and engagement in complex environments. She also serves as Independent Non-Executive Director at Motorsport UK and chairs its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee. The Brawn GP season she lived through is the subject of the 2023 Disney+ documentary Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story. Key speaking topics Internal communications in high-performance organisations Employee engagement and employee experience Leadership communication at scale Culture inside elite sport Diversity, equity and inclusion governance Lessons from Formula One for complex organisations Ideal for Internal communications, corporate affairs and employee experience leaders Chief People Officers, HR directors and heads of culture Senior leadership teams in large or multi-site organisations operating under sustained competitive pressure Boards and committees responsible for inclusion, engagement and organisational culture Audience outcomes A view of internal communications as an operating discipline, drawn from a decade running the function at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team. How a 1,300-person F1 team translates strategy into execution under non-negotiable race deadlines. What four ownership transitions of one F1 team reveal about leading communications through structural change. The link between employee experience and on-track performance, with named examples from Brawn GP and Mercedes’ championship years.

Why organisations work with Nigel Risner He gives senior leaders a working language for personality difference inside their own teams, the Zoo Keeper model of Lions, Monkeys, Elephants, and Dolphins, that they can use in the next leadership meeting. He is one of six UK holders of the Professional Speaking Award of Excellence (PSAE) from the Professional Speakers Association, a peer-judged credential that signals platform craft of a different order from a typical motivational keynote. He is the only speaker named Speaker of the Year by all four major CEO peer-advisory networks in Europe (Vistage, The Academy for Chief Executives, TEC, and Footdown), which is the closest thing the CEO peer-group market has to a buying signal. His material is built from running a brokerage as one of the UK’s youngest CEOs and rebuilding after the late-1980s financial crash, so the leadership content is grounded in operating experience, not theory. He works at any audience size, from a 12-person CEO peer group to conference rooms of several thousand, with the same delivery discipline. Biography highlights Author of “The Impact Code: Live the Life You Deserve” (Capstone) and its follow-up “The Impact Code at Work”. Author of “It’s a Zoo Around Here: The new rules for better communication”, the source text of his Zoo Keeper personality framework. Author of “You Had Me at Hello: The new rules for better networking”. One of six UK speakers awarded the PSAE (Professional Speaking Award of Excellence) by the Professional Speakers Association. Speaker of the Year for Vistage, The Academy for Chief Executives, The Executive Committee, and Footdown. Client work spans BT, BSkyB, Pfizer, GSK, Siemens, HSBC, Pepsi, British Airways, Marks and Spencer, and Royal Bank of Scotland. Biography Most leadership problems inside large organisations look strategic and turn out to be communicative. A capable executive briefs a team, the team agrees in the room, and three weeks later the work has not moved. The diagnosis is usually that the leader spoke in their own dominant style and assumed the rest of the room would translate. Nigel Risner has built a twenty-year speaking career around fixing exactly that gap. His Zoo Keeper framework, drawn from his book “It’s a Zoo Around Here: The new rules for better communication”, gives leaders a fast, memorable way to read the personalities in front of them: Lions who want results, Monkeys who want energy, Elephants who want detail, Dolphins who want harmony. The point is operational. A leader who can flex into all four registers gets decisions made in the meeting rather than relitigated by email afterwards. The credential layer is unusual for a motivational speaker. Risner holds the PSAE from the Professional Speakers Association, a peer-judged award held by only six UK speakers, and is the only speaker in Europe to have been named Speaker of the Year by Vistage, The Academy for Chief Executives, The Executive Committee, and Footdown. Those four bodies are the gatekeepers for CEO peer-advisory work in Europe, which is why his material reads as built for boards and executive teams rather than for general audiences. His later books, “The Impact Code: Live the Life You Deserve” and “The Impact Code at Work”, widen the same argument into executive presence and personal credibility. The throughline is consistent. Senior leaders are paid for the impact they have on other people in a room, and that impact is a learnable craft, not an inherited trait. Key speaking topics Leadership communication and executive presence Personality and behavioural styles in teams Building high-trust senior teams Influence and personal impact for senior leaders Leading through change and disruption Networking and first-impression effectiveness Motivation and peak performance for executive groups Ideal for CEO peer-advisory groups (Vistage, Academy for Chief Executives, YPO style forums) where the audience is operating leaders Senior leadership offsites where the brief is “we are not communicating well as a team” Sales and client-facing leadership conferences focused on influence and presence Newly promoted senior leaders in formal executive development programmes Audience outcomes A practical model for identifying the four dominant personality styles in their own team and adjusting how they brief, sell, and decide A clearer read on which behaviours are reducing their personal impact at senior level Specific habits for opening meetings, opening conversations, and opening relationships in the first ten seconds Renewed appetite for leading the team rather than working around it A shared vocabulary the leadership team can carry into the next 90 days of meetings

Why organisations work with Nigel Taberner His “Level 2 listening” framework – drawn from 10 years of operational hostage negotiation, not from theory – gives leaders a named, structured method for building trust and influencing outcomes when positional power and concessions are unavailable. The “negotiating when you have nothing to give” argument maps directly to the situations most commercial and leadership teams actually face: a resistant enterprise client, a difficult board conversation, a supplier who holds all the terms. An operational record of more than 130 high-risk incidents – armed sieges, suicide interventions, and international kidnap situations – resolved without loss of life at any incident he attended gives his principles a level of practical validation that is genuinely rare. He contributed to the national training programmes that produced negotiators for forces in the UK, Finland, Australia, and the FBI, meaning the frameworks he teaches have been tested and refined across different cultures and high-stakes operational contexts. His interactive masterclasses give leadership and sales teams direct practice in the specific listening and influence techniques – not a theory of why they work, but structured repetition of actually applying them. Biography highlights 30-year career with Greater Manchester Police, rising from Police Constable in Moss Side to Detective Inspector 10 years as an operational hostage negotiator, attending more than 130 armed sieges, suicide interventions, and international kidnap situations States that no incident he attended ended in loss of life Detective Inspector for counter-terrorism policing operations at Manchester Airport and Liverpool John Lennon Airport Member of the national negotiator training team responsible for programmes delivered in the UK, Finland, Australia, and the FBI Founder and Managing Director of Level2Communications Featured speaker at AICPA and CIMA events on commercial negotiation and leadership communication Biography Nigel Taberner joined Greater Manchester Police as a constable in Moss Side in the early 1990s. Three decades later, he retired as a Detective Inspector, having led counter-terrorism operations at Manchester Airport and Liverpool John Lennon Airport. In between, he spent 10 years as an operational hostage negotiator. During those 10 years, he attended more than 130 high-risk incidents – armed sieges, suicide interventions, and international kidnap situations. He states that no one died in any incident he attended. From that experience, he drew a precise argument: what separates a resolved negotiation from a failed one is almost always the quality of listening, not the strength of the opening position. He calls this Level 2 listening – attending fully to what the other person is actually communicating, rather than preparing a response. The commercial application is direct. Most business negotiations happen without meaningful leverage. A sales team pursuing a reluctant client, a leader managing a team through unwanted change, a CFO trying to hold a supplier to terms – each faces the same dynamic a hostage negotiator faces when they hold no cards and can offer nothing in return. That is where the framework Taberner developed applies most sharply. He was a member of the national training team that developed new generations of negotiators for forces in the UK, Finland, Australia, and the FBI. Since founding Level2Communications, he has brought those same principles to corporate audiences, including events run by AICPA and CIMA. Key speaking topics Negotiation without leverage High-stakes communication Active listening and influence Trust-building under pressure Crisis communication Leadership under pressure Emotional intelligence in negotiation Ideal for Senior leaders and executive teams facing difficult internal or external stakeholder conversations Sales and commercial teams whose negotiations depend on relationship and trust rather than pricing power Risk, security, and crisis management professionals HR and people leaders managing conflict, sensitive conversations, or organisational change Audience outcomes A named, structured framework – Level 2 listening – for influencing outcomes when leverage is absent Practical techniques for building trust quickly in unfamiliar or high-pressure conversations A clearer understanding of how professional negotiators approach conversations most people find difficult, and why their methods work Greater confidence in handling conflict, resistant stakeholders, and high-stakes decisions A reframed view of listening as a strategic tool rather than a passive courtesy

Why organisations work with Nihal Arthanayake A daily-broadcast interviewer’s instinct for live conversation. Over eight years presenting the BBC Radio 5 Live afternoon show, plus the Headliners interview series, mean panel craft built across thousands of hours of unscripted live radio. A named winner at the 2019 BBC Radio & Music Awards for Interview of the Year. The room can feel the difference when an interviewer can actually draw out a senior guest, not just read questions in order. The author of a serious trade book on conversation. Let’s Talk (Hachette, 2022) is built on interviews with figures from Mary McAleese to hostage negotiators, which gives Nihal a content keynote that other hosts simply cannot offer. Twenty-five years of cultural fluency across BBC, MTV, Channel 4 and BBC Two. Comfortable on a Hugo Boss or Mercedes stage and equally credible chairing a panel on race, identity or media. Few hosts cover both rooms. Public-trust credentials that travel well into sponsor-sensitive briefs. Appointed to the BBC’s Independent Diversity Advisory Board alongside Sir Lenny Henry and Dame Floella Benjamin; trustee at HOME Manchester; ambassador for the British Asian Trust. Biography highlights BBC Radio 5 Live presenter; eight-plus years on the afternoon show; current host of the Headliners interview series. Winner of Interview of the Year, 2019 BBC Radio & Music Awards. Author of Let’s Talk: How to Have Better Conversations (Hachette, 2022). BBC Radio 1 alumnus; co-host of Asian Beats (Sony Radio Award winner) and host of Review with Nihal. Appointed to the BBC’s Independent Diversity Advisory Board in 2014 by the BBC Director General. Trustee, HOME Manchester. Former trustee, Southbank Centre and British Council. Ambassador, British Asian Trust. Biography Live conversation is harder than it looks on a run sheet. A guarded executive answers in talking points. A four-person panel splinters. An awards stage drifts by the third category. The job of the host is to recover all of that without the audience noticing. That is the craft Nihal Arthanayake has spent twenty-five years building. Eight years presenting the afternoon show on BBC Radio 5 Live, plus the Sunday interview series Headliners, mean a live-radio interviewer who reads a room in real time. The 2019 BBC Radio & Music Award for Interview of the Year recognised the same skill in a different setting: a candid, on-the-record conversation that other interviewers could not have got. That craft is the subject of his 2022 Hachette book, Let’s Talk: How to Have Better Conversations. The book draws on conversations with former Irish president Mary McAleese, Professor Tanya Byron, Lorraine Kelly and Johann Hari, plus hostage negotiators and clinicians, to ask what actually changes when two people listen to each other properly. It gives organisations a content keynote on dialogue, listening and disagreement that most hosts cannot offer. The broader public-trust footprint is what makes the work travel into sponsor-sensitive briefs. Appointed to the BBC’s Independent Diversity Advisory Board in 2014 by the Director General, alongside Sir Lenny Henry, George the Poet and Dame Floella Benjamin. Trustee at HOME Manchester. Ambassador for the British Asian Trust. Corporate hosting clients include Adobe, Google, X, GQ, Hugo Boss, Mercedes-Benz, Tottenham Hotspur and Boots. Key speaking topics Conference and awards hosting Panel moderation and on-stage interviewing The craft of conversation and dialogue Communication and listening as leadership skills Diversity, representation and identity in media Cultural commentary and the public conversation Ideal for Senior corporate awards, summits and gala dinners that need a host who can carry a long-form running order Town halls, leadership conferences and offsites where a CEO or chair will be interviewed live on stage Panel sessions on culture, identity or representation that need an experienced moderator on contested ground Internal communication, L&D and people-team events on listening, dialogue and conversation skills Audience outcomes A live event that holds energy from welcome to close, with senior guests drawn out rather than read at A clearer practical sense of what makes a conversation actually work, drawn from Let’s Talk and twenty-five years of interviewing A panel that moves, with a moderator who reads the room and lets the strongest contributions land A host who is credible on both commercial and culture-and-identity briefs, without switching register awkwardly between them

Why organisations work with Nik Gowing A research base built from hundreds of confidential interviews with corporate, political and military leaders, distilled in the book Thinking the Unthinkable, which gives boards a vocabulary for the failures of imagination they recognise but rarely name. Forty years of front-line international reporting, from martial law in Poland to 9/11, that lets him press senior audiences on geopolitical and operational risk without flinching or flattering. A moderator’s authority earned at BBC World News and across hundreds of senior international forums, used to host board offsites, ministerial roundtables and CEO summits where the conversation has to go somewhere uncomfortable. Standing inside the institutions buyers trust: Distinguished Fellow at RUSI, Visiting Professor at Kings College London, former council member at Chatham House and ODI. A track record of making leaders engage with what they have been avoiding, rather than rehearsing the slide they came to deliver. Biography highlights Main news presenter, BBC World News, 1996 to 2014. Diplomatic Editor, Channel 4 News, 1989 to 1996; bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw with ITN. BAFTA, 1981, for coverage of martial law in Poland. Co-author, Thinking the Unthinkable: A new imperative for leadership in the digital age (John Catt, 2018), and founder of the Thinking the Unthinkable project. Author, Skyful of Lies and Black Swans, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. Visiting Professor, Kings College London; Distinguished Fellow, Royal United Services Institute; Honorary Doctorates from the universities of Exeter and Bristol. Biography The leaders Nik Gowing has spent four decades interviewing, in studios, at summits and behind closed doors, share a pattern. They saw the signal. They had the data. They did not act. Thinking the Unthinkable, the project he founded in 2014 and the book he co-authored with Chris Langdon in 2018, is built on hundreds of confidential conversations with senior figures in business, government and the military about why that keeps happening, and what could change it. The credibility for that conversation comes from the years before. Gowing was a main news presenter on BBC World News from 1996 to 2014, on air for the announcement of Princess Diana’s death and through the live coverage of 9/11. Before the BBC he spent 18 years at ITN, as bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw and as Diplomatic Editor of Channel 4 News. A BAFTA followed his coverage of martial law in Poland in 1981. That broadcast career left him with a particular skill that boards now buy: the ability to chair a difficult conversation in front of senior people, on the record, without losing control of the room or the argument. He moderates regularly for institutions including the World Economic Forum, RUSI and Chatham House. The academic and institutional scaffolding is genuine, not decorative. He is a Visiting Professor at Kings College London’s School of Social Science and Public Policy, a Distinguished Fellow at RUSI, and a former council member at Chatham House and the Overseas Development Institute. The Reuters Institute at Oxford published his earlier study, Skyful of Lies and Black Swans, on institutional vulnerability in the modern information environment. Few moderators bring that depth into the room with them. Key speaking topics Leadership under disruption Anticipating the unthinkable in board strategy Geopolitical risk and the rules-based order Crisis communication and decision-making under pressure Institutional resilience in the digital information environment Senior conference moderation and panel chairing Ideal for Boards, CEOs and executive committees confronting strategic shocks they suspect they are under-rehearsing. Risk, strategy and corporate affairs leaders working on scenario planning, geopolitical exposure and institutional resilience. Convenors of senior international forums, ministerial roundtables and CEO summits who need a moderator who can hold the room. Audience outcomes A direct account of why senior teams systematically miss disruptive signals, drawn from confidential interviews with leaders who lived through it. A sharper read on geopolitical and information-environment risks, from someone who has reported them at first hand. The questions a board should be asking itself before the next unthinkable lands, not after. A working sense of what conformity costs at the top of organisations, and what it takes to break it.

Why organisations work with Nik Wood BBC business desk credibility on stage. Years anchoring Working Lunch, Business Breakfast and Wake up to Money mean he reads board-level interviewees with the calibration of a working business journalist, not a hired host. He produces as well as presents. Through Good Call Media he brings his own camera and editing capability into the event, so live film inserts, recorded interviews and stage content are built and run by the same team that hosts the day. He is equally comfortable interviewing a CEO and a frontline employee. The marketing and communications grounding at Hammonds before broadcast journalism shows up in how he handles mixed-seniority panels. A working journalist’s instinct for the unscripted moment. He has interviewed four UK prime ministers and a string of African heads of state across his career, which translates to composure when a corporate panel goes off-script. Biography highlights Former BBC business correspondent and presenter on Working Lunch, Business Breakfast and Wake up to Money. Co-founder and director of Good Call Media, an independent corporate film and event production company established in 2007. Career interviews include four UK prime ministers and several African presidents. Reporting background covers the Northern Ireland conflict and financial markets across London, Asia and the United States. Earlier career as Director of Marketing and Communications at Hammonds law firm. Corporate and not-for-profit clients include the Eden Project, CQI, IMLPO and Build Africa. Biography The host of a senior corporate event has a narrow job and a wide one. The narrow job is timekeeping and introductions. The wide job is reading the room, extracting the argument from each speaker, and giving the audience a reason to lean in after the third panel of the morning. Nik Wood does the wide job. His credibility on stage comes from the BBC business desk. As a business correspondent and anchor on Working Lunch, Business Breakfast and Wake up to Money, he interviewed chief executives, regulators and policymakers as a working journalist, not as a meeting facilitator. Earlier reporting work spanned the Northern Ireland conflict and financial markets in London, Asia and the United States. Four UK prime ministers and several African presidents sat across the desk from him. In 2007 he co-founded Good Call Media with producer Fiona Molloy. The company is a working film and event production house, not a personal speaking vehicle. That matters operationally: when Nik hosts an event, the same team builds the film inserts, runs the recorded interviews and edits the day’s content. The audience gets a single coherent production rather than a host bolted onto someone else’s running order. He began his career as Director of Marketing and Communications at Hammonds law firm. The combination of in-house corporate communications experience and broadcast journalism explains the range he is booked for: investor and analyst events, awards ceremonies, internal town halls, board-facing panels, and client engagements at organisations from the Eden Project to Build Africa. Key speaking topics Conference moderation and event chairing On-stage interviewing of senior executives Awards ceremony hosting Panel facilitation Live broadcast interviewing Corporate film and video production Business journalism Ideal for Companies running investor days, AGMs or analyst events that need a host who can interview a CFO with credibility. Internal leadership offsites and town halls where the chair needs to draw out both board and frontline voices. Awards ceremonies and recognition events requiring a confident master of ceremonies. Conference organisers who want host and production handled by a single team. Audience outcomes A running order that holds together across a full day, with each session building on the last. Interviews with senior speakers that surface the actual argument, not the prepared statement. Live film and video content integrated into the stage programme, used to set up sessions and shift pace. A panel discussion that stays on the question the audience came to hear answered.

Why organisations work with Nikhil Desai A signature programme on stress management, “Achieving Excellence Thru Stress Management”, that has been delivered to executives across more than 2,000 organisations and refined over three decades. A trainer’s instinct for behaviour change at scale, built through 250,000-plus participants across 42 countries, not a single keynote act. Direct operating credibility from building eight businesses in eight years across Indian textile and automobile manufacturing after his US MBA. A practical blend of corporate yoga practice and MBA discipline that lands well with mixed audiences in Asia, the Gulf, and beyond. Biography highlights Director of The Centre For Excellence, the corporate training firm he founded in 1991 in the year of India’s economic liberalisation. MBA from a US university where he graduated first in his class, followed by a period working in New York. Built and ran manufacturing operations across the Indian textile and automobile sectors before moving full time into training. Programmes delivered to more than 250,000 participants across 300-plus cities in 42 countries. Recipient of the Global Iconic Motivational Speaker Award (Leadership & Excellence Awards 2021) and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World HRD Congress. Author of the forthcoming book “9 Habits Of Super Successful People”. Biography The Centre For Excellence opened its doors in 1991, the year India dismantled its old industrial controls and a generation of managers had to learn a new commercial language. Nikhil Desai had already lived both sides of that shift. He had taken an MBA in the United States, graduating first in his class, then worked in New York before returning to India to build manufacturing businesses across textiles and automobile components. That operating background matters because it shapes what he teaches. He grew one business into eight in eight years, which gave him a working view of how middle managers actually behave under cost pressure, missed deadlines, and family obligation pulling in opposite directions. His signature programmes, “In Pursuit Of Excellence” and “Achieving Excellence Thru Stress Management”, are designed around that lived friction rather than a textbook model of motivation. The reach is large by any standard for the corporate training market. More than 250,000 participants across 300 cities in 42 countries have been through his programmes over three decades. He works in English and Gujarati, runs sessions from Mumbai to Muscat, and is one of a small number of Indian trainers regularly booked into multinational programmes in the Gulf, South Africa, and South East Asia. What he is not is a strategy speaker. The work sits in personal effectiveness, stress resilience, communication, and team behaviour, which is its own discipline and one most senior leaders quietly know their organisations are weakest at. The Lifetime Achievement Award from the World HRD Congress reflects that. His forthcoming book, “9 Habits Of Super Successful People”, continues the same line. Key speaking topics Stress management and personal resilience Personal effectiveness and time management Motivation and excellence in the workplace Leadership and team performance Communication and presentation skills Customer care and sales behaviour Train the trainer programmes Ideal for HR and L&D leaders commissioning company-wide capability programmes Sales and customer-facing teams under sustained delivery pressure Middle managers stepping up into leadership roles for the first time Indian and Gulf-based organisations with mixed-language workforces Audience outcomes Practical techniques for managing stress without disengaging from the work Sharper personal time management habits that survive the week after the session A clearer view of what excellence looks like in their specific role Communication and presentation skills that hold up in front of internal and external audiences Greater confidence in handling difficult customers, colleagues, and team dynamics