Storytelling & Business Communication

Why organisations work with Mick Ebeling “Commit, then figure it out” is an operating method with shipped output behind it. The EyeWriter, Project Daniel, Bento, and Music: Not Impossible all began as problems that engineers and clinicians had filed under impossible. Three TIME Best Inventions across thirteen years: the EyeWriter (2010), Bento (2021), Music: Not Impossible (2023). No other individual has matched that benchmark. He frames innovation around what his team calls “absurdities”, unmet needs attached to named individuals. That vocabulary travels into executive conversations where abstract innovation language usually fails. A career as a film producer shapes how he tells the case studies. Audiences see the working details of each project, including how it got built and where the friction lived. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Not Impossible, the studio that grew out of Not Impossible Labs and now spans the lab, the Not Impossible Institute, and the Not Impossible Foundation. Spin-out companies include Bento and Music: Not Impossible. Only individual to have three inventions named to TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions list: the EyeWriter (2010), Bento (2021), and Music: Not Impossible (2023). The EyeWriter is part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Named to Fortune’s Top 50 World’s Greatest Leaders. Recipient of the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian of the Year Award. Two-time SXSW Innovation of the Year winner; Cannes Lions Titanium Lion winner for Project Daniel; nominated for Design of the Year by London’s Design Museum; WIRED Agent of Change. Author of “Not Impossible: The Art and Joy of Doing What Couldn’t Be Done”, Simon & Schuster, 2015. Founder of The Ebeling Group (2001), a commercial film and animation production company whose credits include Stranger Than Fiction, The Kite Runner, and Quantum of Solace. Biography In April 2009, a graffiti artist named Tony “Tempt” Quan drew his first new piece of art in seven years, using only the movement of his eyes. He had been silenced by ALS since 2003. The technology that made it possible, the EyeWriter, was assembled in a Los Angeles living room. Mick Ebeling had flown in five programmers and hackers from Graffiti Research Lab, Free Art and Technology Lab, and openFrameworks to attempt it. The device is now part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. That episode established the working method behind everything Ebeling has built since. Not Impossible Labs identifies what the team calls “absurdities”: specific human problems that today’s technology should be able to solve and has not. The model is to commit to one named individual, build a working solution, then scale it. The team calls this “Help One. Help Many.” The portfolio that followed kept the same shape. Project Daniel produced 3D-printed prosthetic arms for a teenage boy in South Sudan after a bombing severed his hands. The project was nominated for Design of the Year by London’s Design Museum and won the Cannes Lions Titanium Lion. Bento, a text-based system that connects food-insecure Americans with prepaid meals from local restaurants and grocery stores, started life as Hunger: Not Impossible. It has since spun off into its own company and been named a Fast Company World Changing Ideas honoree. Music: Not Impossible built haptic vests that let deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences feel live music as patterns of vibration. Three of these inventions sit on TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions list, a record no other individual holds. For organisations, the value lies less in the projects themselves than in what they prove. The word impossible is almost always doing more work than it deserves inside a company. Ebeling’s method, “commit, then figure it out”, comes from his earlier career as a film producer at The Ebeling Group, where impossible delivery dates were structural to the business. Audiences leave with a test for the word “impossible” they can run on their own organisation. They also leave with named cases they can cite the next time a hard idea gets that label. Key speaking topics Innovation methodology and the psychology of “impossible” Purpose-driven culture and organisational mission Radical collaboration across disciplines Technology applied to human problems The “Help One. Help Many.” model Storytelling as an innovation discipline Ideal for Innovation and R&D leaders stuck on problems they have classified as too hard to solve CEOs and executive teams trying to translate purpose statements into operating culture Innovation and transformation conferences seeking a credentialed keynote with a named methodology Cross-functional teams being asked to deliver outcomes their existing playbook does not cover Audiences in healthcare, pharma, technology, finance, and professional services, where ambitious problems are routinely filed as too hard to solve Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for separating ideas that are genuinely infeasible from ideas that are simply unattempted A set of named case studies they can cite when defending innovation budgets and ambition inside their organisation A different criterion for committing resources to a hard problem, modelled on a method that has shipped working technology repeatedly A more honest read on the gap between an organisation’s stated purpose and how that purpose shows up in daily decisions

Why organisations work with Michael Wilson He has interviewed chancellors, central bank governors, FTSE chief executives and finance ministers on live television for more than three decades, which is the exact skill set a panel on macro policy or market structure needs in the chair. He was a founder of Sky News in 1989 and built its business unit from scratch, which gives him an operator’s read on how a story moves between newsroom, market and boardroom. He co-authored Fixing Britain: The Business of Reshaping Our Nation with Lord Digby Jones, so he can speak with authority on UK industrial policy, productivity and reform rather than only commenting on it. The World Economic Forum named him Business Broadcaster of the Year, recognition that travels well with international investor and corporate audiences. Inside FTSE 100 and 250 boards he has worked as a media coach and mentor, which means a moderating brief comes with an instinct for what a CEO will say, will not say, and needs help saying. Biography highlights Founder member of Sky Television, 1989, and creator of the channel’s business unit. Business Editor of Sky News for around twenty years, anchoring Budget specials and major financial events through to 2009. Co-author with Lord Digby Jones of Fixing Britain: The Business of Reshaping Our Nation (Wiley, 2011). Voted Business Broadcaster of the Year by the World Economic Forum. Made a Freeman of the City of London in 2006. Visiting Fellow at Cranfield School of Management; currently Director of Business and Economics Editor at Arise News with regular commentary on GB News. Biography Sky News did not have a business unit when it launched in 1989. Michael Wilson built it. As a founder member of the channel, he set up the desk, the contact book and the editorial line that turned Sky into a credible voice on markets, the City and the British economy through the Lawson boom, the ERM crisis and the long period of growth that followed. He stayed for two decades as Business Editor, anchoring Budgets, rate decisions and the financial reporting cycle from the floor of the exchange to the steps of the Treasury. Before Sky he worked at Thames Television and helped found The City Programme in 1987. Since 2009 he has broadcast across BBC, ITV, Fox News, Al Jazeera and LBC, and he now serves as Director of Business and Economics Editor at Arise News with regular commentary slots on GB News. His authority on the substance, not only the craft, is documented. He co-wrote Fixing Britain: The Business of Reshaping Our Nation with Lord Digby Jones, published by Wiley in 2011, an argument for industrial reform rooted in conversations with British business leaders. He holds a Visiting Fellowship at Cranfield School of Management and was made a Freeman of the City of London in 2006. What corporate buyers tend to commission is the chairing and hosting work that sits on top of all this. He has run media training and mentoring inside FTSE 100 and 250 companies for years, which is why he can move between a serious investor Q and A, a panel of finance ministers, and a thousand-person black-tie audience without changing register, and bring each one back on time. Key speaking topics Business and economics broadcasting craft UK economic policy and the City Financial markets and monetary policy Corporate communications and media performance Conference moderation and on-stage interviewing After-dinner business commentary Industrial policy and productivity reform Ideal for Annual conferences, investor days and corporate AGMs that need a chair across macro, markets and corporate strategy. CEO and CFO communications teams looking for media coaching from a working broadcaster. Financial services and City audiences at flagship events, awards dinners and member functions. International investor and policy audiences where a recognised business broadcaster adds credibility to the chair. Audience outcomes A live read on the day’s market and policy news from someone who has spent decades interpreting it on air. A chairing performance that keeps panels on time, on subject and audible to a non-specialist room. A working briefing on how the City, the Treasury and the broadcast newsroom interact. A grounded view of UK industrial policy and reform drawn from his book with Lord Digby Jones. An after-dinner perspective that treats markets and economics as stories, not slides.

Why organisations work with Michael Portillo He has held three Cabinet posts, including the Treasury and Defence briefs, and can describe how spending decisions, security policy, and party-political pressure intersect from inside the room. He brings 25 years of close observation of Westminster as a broadcaster on The Moral Maze, This Week with Andrew Neil, and his GB News weekend programme, which keeps his political reading current rather than historical. He carries one of the most recognisable names and voices in British public life through Great British Railway Journeys and its international spin-offs, which gives a corporate event genuine cultural weight. He has served on the BAE Systems board and the International Commission on Missing Persons, so he can speak to defence industry dynamics and post-conflict governance with first-hand reference points. He chairs panels and prize juries from the Man Booker to UK arts endowments, which makes him an effective moderator and after-dinner host as well as a keynote voice. Biography highlights Cabinet Minister under John Major: Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary of State for Employment, Secretary of State for Defence. MP for Enfield Southgate (1984-1997) and Kensington and Chelsea (1999-2005); Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (2000-2001). Presenter of Great British Railway Journeys and its Continental, American, Indian, Asian, Australian, Alaskan and Canadian, and Coastal series for the BBC since 2010. Long-running panellist on BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze; Conservative voice on BBC’s This Week with Andrew Neil from 2003 to 2019. Non-executive director of BAE Systems (2002-2006); Commissioner of the International Commission on Missing Persons since 1998; President of DEBRA. First-class degree in history from Peterhouse, Cambridge; author of Portillo’s Hidden History of Britain and the Railway Journeys books with Michael O’Mara. Biography The 1997 general election produced the most quoted result in modern British political history. Stephen Twigg unseated Michael Portillo in Enfield Southgate with a 17.4% swing, and the “Portillo moment” entered the language. What is less remembered is that Portillo had, by that point, already run the Treasury’s spending side, the Employment department, and the Ministry of Defence, all before turning forty-five. That CV gives him an unusual vantage on how British government actually works. As Chief Secretary to the Treasury he ran the public spending negotiations that set Whitehall priorities. As Defence Secretary in the mid-1990s he handled procurement, NATO posture, and the Bosnia and Northern Ireland files. As Shadow Chancellor under William Hague he saw the modern Conservative Party’s internal debates from the inside. A broadcaster’s career followed Parliament rather than a corporate one. He has been a regular on BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze for over two decades, was the Conservative seat on This Week with Andrew Neil for its full 16-year run, and now hosts a weekend politics show on GB News. The Great British Railway Journeys franchise, in eight country variants since 2010, made him one of the BBC’s most recognisable presenters. The combination matters for a corporate audience. Portillo can talk about UK fiscal pressure with reference to the spending review process he once ran, about defence and procurement with reference to a Cabinet brief and a BAE Systems boardroom, and about how political risk feels day to day from inside a 25-year broadcasting beat. He chaired the 2008 Man Booker Prize, sits as President of the DEBRA charity, and served as a Commissioner of the International Commission on Missing Persons. He is, in practice, a senior public figure with a working knowledge of how British and European institutions hold together under stress. Key speaking topics UK politics and Westminster decision-making Public spending, the Treasury, and fiscal pressure Defence policy and the UK’s security posture Party leadership and political risk European and Anglo-Spanish relations British media, broadcasting, and public life After-dinner political commentary Ideal for Boards and executive teams looking for an informed read on UK political and fiscal risk Financial services, defence, and public-affairs audiences planning against shifting government priorities Senior client and partner dinners where a recognisable broadcaster as host or speaker adds weight Conferences requiring a political moderator or panel chair with Cabinet-level reference points Audience outcomes A clearer view of how decisions inside the UK Treasury and Cabinet actually get made A current reading of the political pressures shaping spending, regulation, and defence priorities Frank, on-the-record perspective on party leadership and the state of British public life A memorable, well-paced session from a presenter used to live broadcasting and large audiences

Why organisations work with Michael Brenner His core argument; that empathy outperforms authority as both a marketing and a leadership lever, is grounded in practitioner experience inside SAP and NewsCred, not academic research; senior leaders engage with it as a claim someone has actually lived, not theorised His book Mean People Suck gives CMOs and CHROs a shared language for the link between culture, employee engagement, and revenue outcomes, making it useful in conversations that usually stay siloed The “Champion Leader” model is a named, transferable alternative to command-and-control management: specific enough to teach, tested across both large enterprises and early-stage startups His content marketing work is anchored in a measurable ROI framework from The Content Formula, translating content investment into financial terms for leaders who need to justify budgets to the CFO, not just the marketing team He has operated on both sides of the client-agency relationship, which means his diagnosis of where organisations waste marketing spend carries a credibility most single-perspective speakers cannot match Biography highlights CEO and Founder of Marketing Insider Group, a content marketing agency serving Fortune 500 brands and B2B technology companies Former VP of Global Content Marketing Strategy at SAP and Head of Strategy at NewsCred Author of three books: Mean People Suck: How Empathy Leads to Bigger Profits and a Better Life (2019), The Content Formula, and Digital Marketing Growth Hacks Named Top CMO Influencer by Forbes and Top Business Speaker by The Huffington Post Contributor to Forbes, The Economist, and The Guardian; contributor at Content Marketing Institute Featured in Entrepreneur Magazine; facilitated content strategy workshops for MarketingProfs Biography Most organisations treat their marketing problem as a content problem. The more accurate diagnosis is a leadership one: companies default to self-promotion when their customers need help, and they build management cultures that reward compliance when growth requires empathy. Michael Brenner spent two decades working from the inside of that tension – as VP of Global Content Marketing Strategy at SAP, as Head of Strategy at NewsCred, and as CMO across a series of high-growth technology startups. His 2019 book Mean People Suck: How Empathy Leads to Bigger Profits and a Better Life argues that low employee engagement and weak marketing performance share a common root: a leadership culture that has traded empathy for authority. The research and case evidence he assembles make it a commercial argument, not a motivational one. As founder and CEO of Marketing Insider Group, Brenner has built content marketing programmes for more than 75 brands. His earlier book, The Content Formula, provides a practical ROI framework that converts content investment into financial language – useful for marketing leaders who need to make the commercial case to a CFO, not just a brand committee. His keynote work is structured around two named concepts: the “Champion Leader,” a model for leaders who close the gap between what organisations ask their teams to do and what actually drives results; and the “Bullseye Organisation,” which frames customer-centricity as a structural discipline rather than a values statement. A contributor to Forbes, The Economist, and The Guardian, and named Top CMO Influencer by Forbes and Top Business Speaker by The Huffington Post, Brenner speaks across the United States and Europe, primarily to senior marketing, commercial, and leadership audiences. Key speaking topics Customer-centric marketing strategy Content marketing ROI and measurement Empathy-led leadership Employee engagement and culture The Champion Leader model Organisational alignment around the customer B2B marketing and demand generation Ideal for CMOs and marketing directors seeking a measurable framework for content marketing investment CHROs and culture leads addressing the connection between employee engagement and commercial performance CEOs and senior leadership teams weighing the limits of authority-based management B2B technology and SaaS organisations building customer-first marketing and go-to-market capabilities Audience outcomes A practitioner-built argument for why empathy is a commercial lever, with specific cases and research rather than aspiration The “Champion Leader” framework as a named, teachable model for shifting from directive to customer-oriented leadership A measurable ROI methodology for content marketing that can be used in internal budget and investment conversations A practical method for identifying where self-promotional bias is costing the business in audience reach and revenue Clearer criteria for distinguishing marketing that serves the customer from marketing that serves the organisation’s ego

Why organisations work with Matthew Amroliwala A working chair, not a celebrity name on the agenda. He runs panels the way he runs a live news hour, with structure, pace and a clean line of questioning. Three decades of BBC reporting across Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Westminster, Washington and New York gives him an instinct for how to land questions on senior political and corporate figures without the room going flat. Anchors Global on BBC World News, the BBC’s flagship international news programme, daily since 2014. He brings the same register to conference stages. Equally comfortable on a black-tie awards stage, a CEO fireside, and a multi-stakeholder policy panel. The audience reads him as the BBC, which sets a useful tone of seriousness from the first minute. Biography highlights Chief presenter on the BBC News Channel since April 2023. Presenter of Global on BBC World News, the BBC’s international news flagship, since 8 September 2014. Presenter of World News Today across BBC World News and BBC Four since 27 June 2016. Co-presented Crimewatch with Kirsty Young, January 2008 to March 2015. Eight years as a BBC news, political and foreign correspondent reporting from Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Westminster, Washington and New York. Read Law and Politics at Durham University; joined the BBC in 1989. Biography The chair is the variable that decides whether a panel earns the room or wastes it. Matthew Amroliwala has spent more than three decades inside the BBC operating on exactly that variable, first as a correspondent, then as a presenter on UK rolling news for sixteen years, and since 2014 as the anchor of Global on BBC World News. The reporting years are the foundation. He covered the run-up to the Northern Ireland ceasefires, reported from Bosnia during the Balkans conflict, and worked Westminster, Washington and New York on political and foreign assignments. Live news at that level teaches a specific discipline: how to keep a senior figure honest in real time, how to shape a conversation on the clock, how to read a room without losing the line of questioning. That discipline is what conference and event organisers commission. Amroliwala chairs panels and hosts awards where the brief calls for a credible BBC voice on international affairs and a presenter who can hold the structure when a session over-runs or a speaker drifts. He has co-presented Crimewatch with Kirsty Young, presents World News Today across BBC World News and BBC Four, and was promoted to chief presenter on the BBC News Channel in April 2023. For senior audiences, the value is unambiguous. He is the BBC in the room, which sets the tone. He has interviewed the kind of figures the audience expects to hear pressed. And he treats the chair as a working role rather than a ceremonial one. Key speaking topics Conference chairing and moderation Panel facilitation on geopolitics and global affairs Awards hosting and emceeing Fireside interviews with senior leaders International news and current affairs Live broadcast hosting for corporate events Ideal for Conferences and summits on global affairs, geopolitics or international business needing a credible chair Corporate awards ceremonies and gala dinners CEO and leadership fireside conversations where the interviewer needs to press without antagonising Multi-stakeholder policy panels with senior political, regulatory or corporate figures Audience outcomes A panel that surfaces the questions the audience actually came for, not the ones the speakers came prepared to answer. A coherent agenda held to time, with transitions that read as editorial judgement rather than logistics. Senior speakers handled with the register and discipline of live BBC interviewing. An evening or session that lands with the seriousness of a BBC broadcast, not a hosted entertainment slot.

Why organisations work with Mark Schaefer A connected, multi-book argument about where marketing economics are actually going, from Marketing Rebellion to Belonging to the Brand to Audacious, rather than a single talk track repackaged. A working position at the front of the AI-and-marketing conversation, anchored in his Rutgers “Mini-MBA: Digital Marketing in the Age of AI” and his book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. A serious thesis on community as a marketing asset, with case work on brands like Sephora, that gives CMOs a defensible alternative to paid-media-only growth plans. Direct consulting and keynote experience with global enterprises including Pfizer, Cisco, P&G, Coca-Cola, McKinsey, Adidas, Johnson & Johnson, and the U.S. Air Force, which means examples land for both regulated and consumer-facing audiences. A teaching habit, three years studying under Peter Drucker and an active Rutgers executive education role, that shows up in how he structures sessions: argument, evidence, frameworks leaders can take into a Monday meeting. Biography highlights Executive Director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, with consulting work for Pfizer, Cisco, P&G, Coca-Cola, McKinsey, Dell, Adidas, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Air Force, and the UK Government. RBS Executive Education Lecturer at Rutgers Business School; teaches the Mini-MBA in Digital Marketing in the Age of AI and graduate marketing classes. Author of twelve best-selling marketing books, including Marketing Rebellion, Belonging to the Brand, KNOWN, The Content Code, Cumulative Advantage, Return on Influence, How AI is Changing Your Customers, and Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. Audacious launched with the first AI-driven Augmented Reality book cover and reached #1 in Amazon’s marketing category. Founder and co-host of The Marketing Companion podcast and publisher of the {grow} marketing blog. Featured commentator and contributor across The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, CBS News, BBC, NPR, Wired, and Harvard Business Review. Keynote speaker at South by Southwest, the Institute for International and European Affairs, Marketing Summit Tokyo, and Social Media Week London; has lectured at Oxford, Carnegie Mellon, and Princeton. Named the third-most influential digital marketing authority by Brand24 in 2025. Biography The cost of reaching a customer keeps rising while the trust those impressions buy keeps falling. Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins set out the argument that built much of Mark Schaefer’s reputation, that businesses are no longer built on advertising impressions but on human impressions that help customers believe, belong, and find meaning. It is used as assigned reading at more than 70 universities and has been translated into 20 languages. That argument has continued through Belonging to the Brand, which makes the case for community as the next durable marketing strategy, and Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World, which examines brands like e.l.f. Beauty, HBO, and Giant Spoon to show how creative nerve, not algorithmic optimisation, captures attention in saturated markets. Audacious reached number one in Amazon’s marketing category and launched with what the publisher described as the first AI-driven Augmented Reality book cover. His authority is grounded in operating credentials, not commentary alone. Schaefer runs Schaefer Marketing Solutions and has consulted for Pfizer, Cisco, P&G, Coca-Cola, McKinsey, Adidas, Johnson & Johnson, and the U.S. Air Force. At Rutgers Business School, he is the Executive Education lecturer behind the Mini-MBA in Digital Marketing in the Age of AI, and he has lectured at Oxford, Carnegie Mellon, and Princeton. He studied under Peter Drucker for three years, and the structural rigour of that lineage is visible in the way his frameworks are built. He also runs the infrastructure most marketing thinkers only write about. The Marketing Companion is one of the longer-running marketing podcasts in the field, and the {grow} blog has been a fixture in the discipline for over a decade. The result, for senior commercial audiences, is a speaker who treats marketing as a system and tests his arguments in public, every week, against an audience that includes practitioners and competitors. Key speaking topics Human-centred marketing strategy Brand community as a growth strategy AI in marketing and creative work Personal branding for executives and professionals Customer trust, loyalty, and the post-advertising buyer Content strategy and influence Cumulative advantage and competitive momentum Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and heads of marketing rebuilding strategy around community and human connection. CEOs and commercial leaders questioning the ROI of paid-media-led growth plans. Heads of customer experience and digital who need to integrate AI without losing brand distinctiveness. Communications, PR, and corporate marketing leaders in regulated industries facing trust and credibility challenges. Audience outcomes A reframed view of where marketing value now sits: human impressions, community, and creative nerve over paid reach. Concrete case examples, including Sephora, e.l.f. Beauty, HBO, and Giant Spoon, that audiences can map against their own categories. A working position on how to use AI in marketing without becoming indistinguishable from competitors using the same tools. A clearer set of questions to bring back to brand, content, and customer experience teams about what they should stop funding. A vocabulary for talking to boards about brand and community as commercial assets, not soft costs.

Why organisations work with Mark Barton The instinct to know when a speaker is avoiding the question comes from 10,000+ live interviews with central bankers, finance ministers, and CEOs. That is not something a professional facilitator acquires through facilitation training. A moderator who anchored Bloomberg Television’s coverage of six US elections, six UK general elections, the global financial crisis, and Brexit can challenge an economist or minister with authority rather than deference. For executives facing media scrutiny, Barton is among a very small group of coaches who can genuinely recreate the pressure of a live news anchor interrogation: because he spent 23 years on that side of the camera. He has chaired forums for Amundi, Societe Generale, TIME, the Doha Forum, and The FII Institute; organisations that expect substantive interrogation of the room’s most senior participants, not event management. As one of the five journalists who built Bloomberg Television’s European operations from the ground up in 1995, he brings an institutional relationship with the world of global finance and markets that most conference professionals simply do not have. Biography highlights One of five founding journalists, Bloomberg Television’s European operations, London, 1995 23-year Bloomberg TV anchor; hosted Countdown, First Word On Money, European Market Report, Bloomberg Markets, and The European Close Covered six UK general elections, six US elections, the global financial crisis, and Brexit across Bloomberg’s flagship prime-time programming Radio broadcaster: Daybreak Europe (Bloomberg Radio); financial bulletins on NPR, LBC Radio, Jazz FM, and Riviera Radio Conference host at the World Media Awards and The AIBs; moderator at the Horasis Global Meeting and Zurich Global Risk Management Summit Post-Bloomberg clients include Amundi, Societe Generale, TIME, the Doha Forum, and The FII Institute University of London, history Biography Bloomberg Television launched its European operations in London in 1995 with five journalists. Mark Barton was one of them. Over the next 23 years, he anchored the channel’s flagship programming: Countdown, European Market Report, Bloomberg Markets, The European Close. Those two decades built the editorial instincts and financial market depth that define his work today. His coverage record is specific. Six UK general elections. Six US elections. The global financial crisis. Brexit. More than 10,000 live interviews with world leaders, finance ministers, central bankers, and chief executives, including Bill Gates, Jean-Claude Trichet, and Shimon Peres. The experience of managing live, unscripted conversations with the world’s most guarded public figures is not one that transfers through conventional facilitation training. Beyond television, Barton presented Daybreak Europe on Bloomberg Radio and delivered financial market bulletins on NPR, LBC Radio, Jazz FM, and Riviera Radio. He also trained dozens of Bloomberg journalists in on-air communication: work that forms the basis of the media coaching he now delivers to business leaders preparing for public scrutiny. Since leaving Bloomberg in 2018, he has moderated for organisations including Amundi, Societe Generale, TIME, the Doha Forum, and The FII Institute. At the 2019 Horasis Global Meeting, he chaired a plenary on global governance featuring the former Prime Ministers of Romania and Belgium and the former President of Slovenia. The consistent thread: rooms that require a moderator with the credibility to hold their most senior participants to account. Key speaking topics Global financial markets and economic trends Geopolitical risk and international affairs Conference hosting and high-stakes panel moderation Executive media and communications coaching Live broadcast journalism and interviewing Business and financial crisis coverage Presentation skills under pressure Ideal for Boards and senior leadership teams commissioning high-profile forums on global economic risk, geopolitics, or financial markets Conference producers and event directors requiring a moderator with genuine domain authority, not just facilitation skills Chief Communications Officers and communications teams preparing executives for live media exposure C-suite leaders undergoing media training ahead of investor events, public testimony, or broadcast interviews Audience outcomes A moderated panel or forum with the editorial discipline and intellectual challenge of a live news broadcast Executives with a clearer understanding of how to communicate complex positions under real media pressure – not simulated conditions A more productive leadership dialogue: one that surfaces genuine disagreement rather than managing it toward pre-approved consensus Practical techniques for live interview performance, grounded in the experience of 10,000+ actual broadcast interviews Increased confidence in high-stakes public settings, drawn from observing how the world’s most scrutinised figures handle live questioning

Why organisations work with Marco Tempest He works inside the technology he talks about. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, MIT Media Lab and ETH Zurich Space are his day-to-day environments, not credentials borrowed for the stage. He treats perception as the strategic variable. Audiences leave with a sharper sense of how attention, framing and trust are engineered, which is the part of technology adoption most leadership conversations skip. His material is built with the tools clients want to understand: drones, robots, augmented reality, generative systems. The demonstration is the explanation. Seven TED talks and keynotes at SIGGRAPH, Davos, Cannes Lions and IBC give him a tested vocabulary for translating complex systems into language a board can act on. He has the rare standing to brief a NASA mission team in the morning and headline a Fortune 100 leadership offsite in the evening, and to make the same argument in both rooms. Biography highlights Director’s Fellow, MIT Media Lab. Creative Technologist and Consultant, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; NASA Honor Award recipient. Director, Pi Innovation Hub, ETH Zurich Space. Founder and Director, MagicLab, New York. Seven-time TED speaker; SIGGRAPH 2020 keynote. Merlin Award for Best Contemporary Magician (2010); World Magic Award for Best Contemporary Magic (2009); Mandrakes d’Or (1994); Special Fellowship, Academy of Magical Arts. Biography A drone swarm performing in formation looks like a technology demo until you watch how an audience reacts to it. The reaction is the product. That is the lens Tempest brings to every emerging technology conversation: not what the system can do, but what it does to the person watching. He holds the working credentials to make that argument seriously. He is a Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, a Creative Technologist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory with a NASA Honor Award for his contribution to COVID-19 ventilator work, and director of the Pi Innovation Hub at ETH Zurich’s Space division. He also runs MagicLab, a New York consortium that prototypes illusion and digital technology together. The performance work is the testing ground for the ideas. Seven TED talks and keynotes at SIGGRAPH, Davos, Cannes Lions and IBC have used robots, AR, drones and generative systems as live material, not slideware. The Merlin Award, World Magic Award and Mandrakes d’Or sit alongside the academic and engineering affiliations because the discipline is the same one: engineering perception with precision. For executive audiences, the value is specific. Tempest gives leadership teams a working model of how attention, trust and belief actually behave around new technology, drawn from the labs where that technology is being built. A board that has heard him is better equipped to ask the second-order questions about adoption, narrative and human response that strategy decks routinely miss. Key speaking topics Emerging technology and human perception Robotics, drones and autonomous systems Augmented and mixed reality Generative AI and creativity Innovation storytelling Space technology and exploration The psychology of attention and trust Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI, robotics or XR strategy CTO, CIO and chief innovation leaders shaping emerging-technology roadmaps Marketing and brand leadership rethinking customer attention in saturated channels Leadership offsites and innovation summits where the technology argument needs to land with non-technical executives Audience outcomes A working mental model for how attention and trust shift when new technology enters a customer relationship Specific examples, drawn from NASA JPL, MIT Media Lab and live performance, of how robots, drones, AR and generative systems behave in front of real audiences Sharper questions to put to internal technology and innovation teams about adoption and human response A reframing of innovation storytelling as a discipline with rules, not a soft skill

Why organisations work with Lars Sudmann He brings Fortune 500 operating weight to leadership work. A former P&G CFO and Business Unit Strategy Leader speaks to executive committees in their own language. His self-leadership framework, drawn from his TEDx talk that has crossed 1.9 million views, gives senior leaders a usable model for the personal habits that determine whether strategy actually lands. The Spaghetti Principle, the thesis of his book on innovation, gives organisations a structured way to run more experiments without losing strategic discipline. He is a 6-time Belgian and 2-time European Champion of Public Speaking. Executive presence and communication craft are not a sideline; they are a discipline he can teach. As Council Director at The Conference Board, he convenes CFOs and strategy leaders across Europe and the Gulf, so the room he walks into is one he already understands. Biography highlights Former CFO Belgium and Business Unit Strategy Leader at Procter & Gamble. Principal of Sudmann & Company, advising Fortune 500 leadership teams on strategy execution and change. Council Director at The Conference Board (Strategy & Transformation, Finance Transformation, Gulf councils). Lecturer on leadership and innovation at RWTH Aachen, Braunschweig University, and Lüneburg University. Author of “Innovation that Sticks: Reach Success as a Leader in your Field with the Spaghetti Principle”. Multiple TEDx talks on self-leadership and innovation, with combined viewership in the millions. 6-time Belgian and 2-time European Champion of Public Speaking. Featured in BBC, Fast Company, Inc., The Washington Post, and Manager Magazin. Biography Most leadership content treats execution as a structural problem. Sudmann treats it as a personal one. His TEDx talk on self-leadership, now past 1.9 million views, argues that the daily behaviour of senior leaders is what determines whether strategy moves through the organisation or stalls in the slide deck. The argument carries weight because of the chair he sat in. Sudmann was CFO Belgium at Procter & Gamble and led business unit strategy inside the same group. He has run the numbers, owned the plan, and watched what actually happens when a leadership team is asked to change while still hitting the quarter. That experience now shapes Sudmann & Company, his consulting and training practice, and his role as Council Director at The Conference Board, where he convenes strategy and finance leaders across Europe and the Gulf. He lectures on innovation and leadership at RWTH Aachen, Braunschweig, and Lüneburg, and his book “Innovation that Sticks” sets out the Spaghetti Principle: a disciplined way to run small experiments and keep only what holds. The communication craft is its own credential. Six Belgian and two European public speaking titles mean a Sudmann keynote is not a polished version of corporate decks. It is built to land, with senior audiences, on the first hearing. Key speaking topics Self-leadership and executive habits Strategy execution under pressure Change leadership in complex organisations Innovation discipline and the Spaghetti Principle High-performance leadership teams Executive communication and presentation craft Ideal for Executive committees and senior leadership teams entering a major strategic shift. CFOs, strategy leaders, and transformation leads accountable for execution. Boards and leadership development programmes seeking a credible voice on self-leadership and high-performance behaviour. Conferences with audiences of senior corporate leaders across finance, strategy, and operations. Audience outcomes A working model of self-leadership that senior leaders can apply on Monday morning. A sharper read on why their current strategy is or is not moving through the organisation. The Spaghetti Principle as a method for running more disciplined innovation experiments. Concrete language and structure for executive communication, drawn from competitive speaking craft. A vocabulary for leadership behaviour their team can adopt collectively, not just individually.

Why organisations work with Kevin Kelly His Xceptional Execution methodology is not motivational scaffolding – it is a documented framework built from original case study research with high-growth entrepreneurs across the globe, making the argument that execution, not vision, is the real driver of commercial success. Do! The Pursuit of Xceptional Execution was endorsed by Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence, as the book Peters himself had always wanted to write – a specific, named validation from one of the most cited figures in management literature. The Triple A (Attention, Awareness, Authentic Action) and Storytelling frameworks give teams named, repeatable tools for immediately improving how they earn attention, structure conversations, and close in markets where buyers are already sceptical before a call begins. His cross-industry track record is verifiable: rated the highest-performing speaker at Microsoft’s World Partner Conference (92.5% satisfaction score, ahead of five other speakers on the programme) and a repeat keynote speaker at the Million Dollar Round Table – two of the most commercially exacting professional audiences in technology and financial services. His starting point is always the specific failure mode that sales leaders recognise – the knowing-doing gap – rather than generic motivation; audiences leave with a named diagnosis and specific tools, not energy that fades by the following Monday. Biography highlights Founder of Advanced Marketing, established in Ireland in 1990 following a career breaking sales records across construction and manufacturing sectors in Ireland and internationally Author of five business books, including Do! The Pursuit of Xceptional Execution, endorsed by Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence How? When You Don’t Know How sold 15,000 copies in Ireland – a bestseller for an independent Irish author on a first title Developed the Xceptional Execution Video Series for Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Community; rated top speaker at the 2015 Microsoft World Partner Conference with a 92.5% audience satisfaction score Repeat keynote speaker at the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT), one of the most selective annual platforms for financial services professionals globally Has addressed audiences across more than 35 countries, with named corporate clients including GE Healthcare, KPMG, Hologic, Hang Seng Bank, Lane Crawford, and ICON Clinical Research Biography The central problem in most commercial teams is not a shortage of knowledge. It is a shortage of consistent execution. Kevin Kelly, founder of Advanced Marketing, has built a 30-year methodology on that distinction: the argument that competitive advantage in sales and leadership is won not by the team with the most insight, but by the team that acts on ordinary ideas with extraordinary discipline. His framework, Xceptional Execution, emerged from structured research with entrepreneurs and executives across the globe: people who achieved outsized commercial results not through original thinking, but through repeatable, disciplined action. Do! The Pursuit of Xceptional Execution captured this research and was endorsed by Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence, as the book Peters himself had always wanted to write. The frameworks Kelly uses in his sessions: Triple A (Attention, Awareness, Authentic Action) and Storytelling, are designed to be immediately applicable by sales and leadership teams returning to their desks the next morning. At Microsoft’s World Partner Conference he was rated the highest-performing speaker on a six-speaker programme, with a 92.5% audience satisfaction score. He has since delivered keynotes for the Million Dollar Round Table and for commercial audiences across more than 35 countries spanning financial services, healthcare, technology, and professional services. Based in the west of Ireland, Kelly holds a marketing degree and began his career breaking sales records in construction and manufacturing before founding Advanced Marketing in 1990. His first book, How? When You Don’t Know How, sold 15,000 copies in Ireland. His subsequent body of work (five books in total) returns repeatedly to the same conviction: that performance, at the individual and organisational level, is almost always a question of execution rather than ambition. Key speaking topics Sales performance and commercial execution Attention and persuasion in distracted markets Xceptional Execution methodology and frameworks Storytelling and business communication Leadership, engagement, and team performance Entrepreneurship and growth through disciplined action Communication and influence in multicultural environments Ideal for Sales directors and commercial leaders seeking to close the gap between sales training and sustained field performance CEOs and senior executives accountable for execution culture across distributed or international teams Partner and channel organisations – particularly in technology and financial services – where performance depends on enabling third-party sales behaviours Associations and conference organisers serving entrepreneurial, financial services, or sales professional audiences (including MDRT-type communities) Audience outcomes A named framework (Triple A and Storytelling) for structuring sales conversations and earning attention from overloaded, sceptical buyers A shift in perspective from sales as persuasion to sales as disciplined execution – with specific practices that distinguish knowing from consistently doing Practical storytelling tools for making commercial messages stick in distracted, multicultural, and low-trust environments Clarity on the specific behaviours and mindsets that separate average teams from those that execute consistently under pressure Approaches to converting disengaged employees and resistant prospects into active advocates – grounded in the Xceptionalists research from Do!

Why organisations work with Julian Treasure He has run an operating consultancy, The Sound Agency, advising global brands on retail, office and public-space sound for two decades. The work has commercial outcomes attached, not theory. His TED catalogue is one of the most viewed of any speaker on any subject, which gives senior audiences a shared starting point before he steps on stage. He treats listening as a leadership capability with a teachable structure, and his book How to Be Heard sets out the model in detail. He covers the rarely combined territory of personal communication craft and the sonic design of physical workplaces, so he is credible with HR, brand and facilities audiences in the same room. Awards from Toastmasters International and the International Listening Association place him inside the formal communication and listening professions, not just the speaker circuit. Biography highlights Founder and chairman of The Sound Agency, audio branding consultancy Five TED talks; combined views above 160 million; “How to Speak So That People Want to Listen” is TED’s sixth most-viewed talk Author of Sound Business (2014), How to Be Heard (2017) and Sound Affects (2025) Toastmasters International Golden Gavel Award; International Listening Association Special Recognition Award Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Marketors Founded and sold UK customer magazine publisher TPD Group; former chairman of the UK Association of Publishing Agencies; PPA Chairman’s Award (2002) Biography Sound is the most underused operating variable in most organisations. Retailers play music chosen by the manager on shift. Offices design for visual brand and acoustic accident. Leaders speak without ever auditing how they are heard. The financial cost is real and the cultural cost is larger. The Sound Agency was built around that gap. Founded by a former publisher and musician with a Cambridge economics degree, the consultancy has spent two decades advising global brands on retail soundscapes, office acoustics and audio identity, with measurable effects on sales, wellbeing and behaviour. The argument is that sound is a commercial system, designed or accidental, and most organisations choose accidental. The communication work is the second half of the same proposition. Three books, Sound Business, How to Be Heard and Sound Affects, set out a structured model for speaking and listening as leadership skills rather than soft attributes. The TED catalogue, five talks above 160 million combined views, has made the speaking talk one of the most watched pieces of business communication content ever recorded. The Toastmasters Golden Gavel and the International Listening Association Special Recognition Award place him inside the formal disciplines, not adjacent to them. For senior teams, he offers something specific: a working theory of how attention, voice and environment shape commercial and cultural outcomes, and the operating experience to back it up. The Royal Society of Arts fellowship and the Worshipful Company of Marketors livery are part of a wider institutional footprint that signals durability rather than novelty. Key speaking topics Conscious listening as a leadership skill Powerful speaking and executive voice Audio branding and sonic identity Sound design in workplaces and retail environments Communication and engagement in distracted organisations Wellbeing effects of sound and noise Trust and credibility in senior communication Ideal for CMOs and brand leadership rethinking customer experience beyond the visual HR, internal communications and culture leads working on listening and engagement Retail, hospitality and property leadership designing customer-facing environments Senior leaders preparing for high-stakes speaking, board, investor or media Audience outcomes A working model for listening as a measurable leadership capability Specific techniques for executive voice, structure and presence in high-stakes settings A new lens on the commercial and cultural cost of accidental sound in workplaces and retail A shared vocabulary for communication quality across HR, brand and facilities functions Concrete next steps that connect personal communication craft to organisational outcomes

Why organisations work with Juan Senor Co-edits the WAN-IFRA Innovation in News Media report and the FIPP Innovation in Magazine Media report, the two annual reference works on what is actually working commercially across global publishing. Has advised hundreds of news organisations on every continent on the parallel work of rebuilding the news product and rebuilding the business model that funds it. Speaks with authority on disinformation, AI slop, and platform dependency from inside the industry, not as an outside commentator. Hosts the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and the Reinvention Festival, with moderating credits at Money20/20 and the World Economic Forum, which means a senior commercial audience already knows him on stage. Biography highlights President and Principal Partner, INNOVATION Media Consulting Group, London. Co-editor of the annual Innovation in News Media World Report (WAN-IFRA) and the Innovation in Media report (FIPP). Former visiting fellow, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. Former foreign affairs and defence reporter, PBS’s MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour; team recipient of a DuPont-Columbia Journalism Award and Emmy nomination for interviews with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin. Former presenter and correspondent for CNBC Europe, EBN/Wall Street Journal TV, and International Herald Tribune Television. Long-running host of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity; moderator at the World Economic Forum, Money20/20, and the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress. Biography Most news organisations are now wrestling with two structural problems at once. Their commercial model has been hollowed out by platform dependency. Their editorial product is competing for attention against AI-generated content produced at industrial scale, much of it designed to mimic real journalism. Juan Senor has spent two decades inside that problem. As President of Innovation Media Consulting Group, he has advised hundreds of news and media organisations across every continent on the parallel work of rebuilding the news product and the business model that funds it. He co-edits the WAN-IFRA Innovation in News Media report and the FIPP Innovation in Magazine Media report, the closest the industry has to a running ledger of what audiences are willing to pay for. His authority on the editorial side comes from the desk. He spent seven years as a war and conflict reporter for PBS NewsHour, where the team’s coverage won a DuPont Award and his own work earned an Emmy nomination. He went on to present for EBN-Wall Street Journal TV and CNBC Europe and served as London correspondent for International Herald Tribune Television. He is a former Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, and is quoted regularly in The Economist and The Financial Times. He has also hosted the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for fourteen years and the Reinvention Festival for a decade, with moderating credits at Money20/20 and the World Economic Forum. That hosting work places him in front of the same senior commercial audience whose business problem he is now advising on. Key speaking topics Business model innovation in news and magazine media Paid content, subscription, and reader-revenue strategy Newsroom transformation and product strategy Digital disruption and the platform economy The future of journalism and trust in media Media leadership and editorial commercial alignment Ideal for Publisher CEOs, editors-in-chief, and chief product officers in news and magazine media CMOs and brand leaders rethinking owned-content and editorial strategy Industry associations, media congresses, and creative festivals needing a credible main-stage host or keynote Boards of content-driven businesses navigating subscription, advertising, and platform shifts Audience outcomes A current read on which paid-content models are working, with named publishers and live revenue figures A clearer view of what editorial leaders should stop doing, not only what to start Frameworks for aligning newsroom, product, and commercial teams around a single paid-content thesis A working language for board-level conversations about media disruption, drawn from the WAN-IFRA report