Storytelling & Business Communication

Why organisations work with Lisa Nichols She speaks to the part of a workforce that engagement surveys cannot reach: the private doubt, fatigue, and self-protection that quietly drains performance during change. Her credibility is lived, not theoretical. She built a multi-million dollar enterprise from public assistance, and she uses that arc to make resilience feel concrete to senior teams who have heard every framework. She has been trusted by Google, Amazon, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and NBC for workforce and leadership development sessions, which is a useful signal for enterprise buyers vetting cultural fit. She is one of the most recognised motivational voices of her generation, with reach through The Secret, Oprah, The Today Show, and a Broadway debut at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. That recognition fills rooms and earns attention before she opens her mouth. Her work translates well into multi-format engagements: keynote, executive coaching circles, and emerging-leader programmes through Motivating the Masses, so a single booking can extend into a programme. Biography highlights New York Times bestselling author of No Matter What! and author of Abundance Now (HarperCollins, 2016). Featured teacher in The Secret (2006), the global self-help film that introduced her to a mass audience. Founder and CEO of Motivating the Masses, Inc., a personal and business development training company. Founder of the Motivating the Teen Spirit Foundation, focused on teen mental health, self-esteem, and dropout prevention. Broadway debut in December 2024 with the one-woman show When My Soul Speaks at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, directed by Emmy winner Nick Nanton. Recipient of the Humanitarian Award from the country of South Africa, The Ambassador Award, and the LEGO Foundation’s Heart of Learning Award. Biography Public assistance and a baby wrapped in towels because the diapers had run out. That is where Lisa Nichols started in 1994. The arc from that night in a small apartment to a CEO’s chair, a New York Times bestseller list, and a Broadway stage is the source material she draws on when she speaks to leadership teams about resilience. She came to a global audience through The Secret, the 2006 film that sold tens of millions of copies and put a small group of teachers in front of a mass readership. Her own book, No Matter What!, followed and reached the New York Times bestseller list. Abundance Now, published by HarperCollins in 2016, took the same lived material into a more practical framework for personal and professional change. The corporate work sits underneath that public profile. Through Motivating the Masses, the training company she founded and runs, Nichols has delivered leadership and engagement programmes for Google, Amazon, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and NBC. The brief is usually the same: a workforce facing change, a culture that needs reigniting, or a leadership cohort that has the strategy but not the conviction. In December 2024, Nichols took the same material to Broadway, performing When My Soul Speaks for one night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater under Emmy winner Nick Nanton. Eleven vignettes covered abusive relationships, poverty, single motherhood, and the late-arriving private wins. It is the same story she tells corporate audiences, told in the form most people only see on television, and it is part of why her name still draws a room. Key speaking topics Resilience and personal conviction Employee engagement through change Inclusive and values-based leadership Self-leadership for emerging leaders Storytelling for organisational influence Women’s leadership and advancement Ideal for CHROs and culture leads designing engagement, wellbeing, or DEI programmes that need a credible lived voice rather than a frameworks-only speaker. Senior leadership offsites where conviction, accountability, and personal resilience are the agenda, not the warm-up. Emerging-leader and high-potential cohorts inside large enterprises. Women’s leadership networks and ERG flagship events looking for a recognised voice with a corporate track record. Audience outcomes Leaders leave with a sharper sense of how their own conviction shows up to their teams in periods of change. Cohorts leave with practical language for resilience and self-trust they can use in difficult conversations the next week. Engagement and wellbeing programmes gain a vocabulary that lands across seniority levels, not only at the top. Audiences leave with a story arc they remember, which is what makes the rest of the programme stick.

Why organisations work with Deeyah Khan She has spent years in rooms with jihadis, neo-Nazis, and honour-killing perpetrators and come out with a practical method for dialogue under hostility, which transfers directly to how senior leaders handle conflict inside their own organisations. Her authority on polarisation is earned, not theorised. The films (Jihad, White Right: Meeting the Enemy, America’s War on Abortion) are the primary source, and they sit behind two Emmys, two Peabodys, a BAFTA, and an RTS. She was appointed the first UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Artistic Freedom and Creativity, a signal that her work is taken seriously at the level of global institutions, not just media. She gives leadership teams something rare in DEI and culture content: a repeatable approach to listening across difference that holds up when the stakes are real and the room is hostile. Biography highlights Two Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards for documentary filmmaking. BAFTA winner (America’s War on Abortion) and BAFTA nominee (Jihad: A Story of the Others; White Right: Meeting the Enemy). First UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Artistic Freedom and Creativity, appointed 2016. Founder of Fuuse, a media and arts company centring women, minorities, and third-culture voices; founder of sister-hood, a platform for women of Muslim heritage. Recipient of the Ossietzky Prize (Norwegian PEN), the University of Oslo Human Rights Award, and the Peer Gynt Prize awarded by the Parliament of Norway. TED speaker on the radicalisation of young Muslims in Europe. Biography Most organisations treat polarisation as a communications problem. Deeyah Khan treats it as a listening problem, and she has the footage to prove the distinction matters. Her documentary work has put her across the table from neo-Nazis, jihadis, and the families of honour-killing victims, and the method she built in those rooms is what senior leaders now ask her to bring into theirs. The body of work is specific. Banaz: A Love Story won her a first Emmy and Peabody for documenting the honour killing of Banaz Mahmod. Jihad: A Story of the Others was BAFTA-nominated and drew on two years of interviews with convicted extremists and former jihadis. White Right: Meeting the Enemy, shot inside the American far right and at the Charlottesville rally, won a second Emmy. America’s War on Abortion won a BAFTA. Muslim in Trump’s America added a second Peabody. That record is why institutions treat her as more than a filmmaker. In 2016 UNESCO appointed her its first Goodwill Ambassador for Artistic Freedom and Creativity. Norwegian PEN awarded her the Ossietzky Prize. The Parliament of Norway awarded her the Peer Gynt Prize. Through Fuuse and sister-hood she has also built platforms for women of Muslim heritage and third-culture voices to tell their own stories rather than be described by others. What she brings to a corporate audience is the translation of that practice into leadership. How do you hold a conversation with someone whose values you reject, long enough to understand what is actually driving them? How do you stay in the room when it would be easier to escalate? How does a senior team model that behaviour downward without looking weak? Khan turns her interview method into a working discipline for leaders who need to hold their organisations together across real difference. Key speaking topics Dialogue across ideological and cultural divides Leadership in polarised environments Empathy as an operating discipline Difficult conversations at senior levels Storytelling and communication under pressure Culture, belonging, and inclusion Countering extremism and radicalisation Ideal for CHROs and heads of culture navigating internal polarisation, identity tension, and DEI backlash. CEOs and executive teams preparing for public-facing crises where values, reputation, and employee trust collide. Leadership development programmes focused on inclusive leadership, difficult conversations, and psychological safety. Public-sector, NGO, and education leaders working on social cohesion, integration, and countering extremism. Audience outcomes A concrete method for staying in conversation with people whose views they find difficult, without performing agreement. Sharper language for naming the tensions inside their own teams and a cleaner read on where polarisation is actually coming from. A more honest standard for what empathy looks like at senior level, distinct from niceness or avoidance. Renewed confidence that leaders can address values-based conflict directly without fracturing the organisation.

Why organisations work with Matt Le Tissier He spent his entire 16-year professional career at Southampton, scoring 209 goals in 540 appearances, which gives any session on loyalty and culture a rare lived foundation rather than a borrowed example. He was the first midfielder to reach 100 Premier League goals and converted 47 of 48 career penalties, both records that travel well in front of audiences who recognise top-flight football. He was voted greatest Premier League player ever in a 2020 Eurosport poll, which gives him the sort of standing in the UK market that makes him a draw for hospitality, client events, and after-dinner bookings. He spent close to two decades as a Sky Sports Soccer Saturday panellist, so the broadcasting craft, anecdote pacing, and ease in front of a room are already there. His autobiography Taking Le Tiss, published by HarperSport, gives the personal narrative a clear public form to draw on for keynote and Q&A material. Biography highlights One-club career at Southampton, 1986 to 2002: 209 goals in 540 appearances. First midfielder to score 100 Premier League goals; 100 goals and 64 assists in 270 Premier League appearances. PFA Young Player of the Year, 1989-90. Eight England caps, 1994 to 1997. Career penalty record of 47 from 48. Voted greatest Premier League player ever in a 2020 Eurosport poll. Long-running Sky Sports Soccer Saturday panellist until August 2020; subject of Sky Sports’ Le God: The Matt Le Tissier Story. Author of Taking Le Tiss, HarperSport, 2009. Biography Southampton signed Matt Le Tissier in 1986 and never let him go. He spent sixteen years at the club, scored 209 goals in 540 appearances, and finished his career as their second-highest scorer in history. In an era when most top players moved for bigger clubs and bigger contracts, that career stands out on its own. The Premier League records do most of the talking. Le Tissier was the first midfielder to reach 100 Premier League goals, with 64 assists alongside them, and his career penalty record of 47 from 48 is still cited as the strongest in English top-flight football. The PFA Young Player of the Year award in 1989-90 marked him out early, and the 2020 Eurosport poll naming him greatest Premier League player ever gave a generation of fans a chance to make the case again, two decades after he retired. For corporate audiences, the value is in what one career at one club teaches about sticking with an institution through change, relegation fights, and quieter seasons. He played under multiple managers, refused several moves, and stayed visible in the public eye long after retirement. After his playing career he spent close to two decades as a Sky Sports Soccer Saturday panellist, which sharpened the storytelling and the timing that an after-dinner audience or a moderated panel needs. His autobiography Taking Le Tiss, published by HarperSport in 2009, set out the career in his own voice. Sky Sports’ Le God: The Matt Le Tissier Story, made about a player who never left, gives any room he speaks in an immediate point of reference: a one-club Premier League career, on his own terms, in a southern English town that adopted him as its own. Key speaking topics Loyalty and the one-club career Pressure and composure in front of goal Sustained performance across a long sporting career Premier League history and analysis Life as a broadcaster after elite sport After-dinner storytelling Ideal for Hospitality, client entertainment, and brand activation events in the UK where a recognisable Premier League figure is a draw. After-dinner and awards bookings for sales teams, partner events, and incentive nights. Panel guest or moderated Q&A formats at sports business, fan engagement, and football industry events. Senior leadership off-sites and sales conferences where loyalty and long-career discipline are part of the agenda. Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what it takes to commit to one organisation across sixteen years of changing leadership. A grounded view of pressure moments, including penalty taking and high-stakes decisions, from someone with the records to back it up. Stories from the Premier League’s first decade told by a player who lived it and then spent two decades broadcasting it. A sharper sense of what life looks like for an elite performer when the playing career ends and the public role continues.

Why organisations work with Kunle Barker He runs a construction firm. Illustrious Homes has delivered thousands of residential refurbishments, school refits, and sports-centre projects since 2004, so his views on retrofit and net zero are grounded in what is actually buildable. He sits inside the policy conversation. He has advised the House of Lords and the Church of England on housing strategy and is the lead masterplan consultant on the Brent Cross Town regeneration scheme. He is a recognised voice on UK net zero in the built environment. He was the first Unlock Net Zero Ambassador and a CIOB Client Champion, with a regular column in the Architects’ Journal and frequent commentary on Sky News and Times Radio. He works comfortably at the front of a stage. Presenter and curator credits at Grand Designs Live with Kevin McCloud, plus Channel 4 and ITV property shows, mean he can host, moderate, and translate technical content for non-technical audiences. Biography highlights Founder of Illustrious Homes (2004), a construction and design management firm specialising in residential refurbishment, education and sports facility projects. Lead Masterplan Consultant on Brent Cross Town, the multi-billion-pound regeneration scheme led by Related Argent. 2022 inaugural Unlock Net Zero Ambassador; 2023 Unlock Net Zero Ambassador for Inside Housing. CIOB Client Champion for the Chartered Institute of Building. Broadcasting credits include ITV’s “Save Money: My Beautiful Green Home” and “Love Your Home & Garden” with Alan Titchmarsh, “Renovate Don’t Relocate” with Sarah Beeny, “Project Home” (Channel 4, 2023) with Nick Grimshaw, and presenter/curator at Grand Designs Live with Kevin McCloud. Regular columnist for the Architects’ Journal and Grand Designs Magazine; property commentator for Sky News and Times Radio. Biography UK housing accounts for roughly a fifth of national carbon emissions, and the country has more than 28 million existing homes. The retrofit problem is not abstract; it is a question of which walls, which boilers, which planning rules, and which budgets, on which streets. Kunle Barker has spent two decades inside that problem. He founded Illustrious Homes in 2004 and has since delivered thousands of residential refurbishments alongside school and sports-centre projects. That operating base gives his commentary on net zero, retrofit, and sustainable construction something most built-environment speakers lack: a working site to test the argument against. The advisory work followed. He has briefed the House of Lords and the Church of England on housing policy, sits on a round table on UK future housing strategy, and is the lead masterplan consultant on Brent Cross Town, the Related Argent regeneration scheme. He is the inaugural Unlock Net Zero Ambassador and a CIOB Client Champion, and writes regularly for the Architects’ Journal and Grand Designs Magazine. The broadcasting work is where most audiences first meet him. He has co-presented with Alan Titchmarsh and Sarah Beeny on ITV, fronted “Project Home” on Channel 4 with Nick Grimshaw, and presents at Grand Designs Live alongside Kevin McCloud. The reason that matters here, beyond profile, is that he can take a board-level argument about decarbonising housing stock and make it land with a non-specialist room without losing the technical substance. Key speaking topics Sustainable building and retrofit Net zero in the built environment UK housing policy and the housing crisis Urban regeneration and placemaking Future of housing and home design Construction industry transformation Ideal for Property, construction, and real-estate boards setting retrofit and net zero strategy Housing associations, developers, and local authority leadership teams working on regeneration or decarbonisation programmes ESG, sustainability, and building-products organisations needing a credible external voice on UK housing Conference and awards organisers who need a host or moderator who can carry technical built-environment content Audience outcomes A clearer sense of where UK net zero ambition collides with the reality of building, retrofitting, and financing housing. A practitioner’s view of which sustainable building practices actually scale on real projects and which stall. Familiarity with the policy and regeneration conversations shaping the next decade of UK housing. A confident framing of how organisations in property, construction, and adjacent sectors should talk about climate action with customers, residents, and regulators.

Why organisations work with Karim Zeroual He has presented live on national television since 2014, which is the closest professional analogue to running a thousand-seat awards night without an autocue safety net. A Strictly Come Dancing final puts a performer in front of eleven million viewers under live conditions. That is a different category of composure to most stage hosts on the circuit. His CBBC and BBC Bitesize background gives him a precise instinct for keeping mixed audiences with the room, which translates directly to long conference agendas and multi-generational employee events. He moves between scripted broadcast, live theatre at the London Palladium, and improvised studio formats. Few hosts operate credibly in all three. For brands targeting younger employees, families or community audiences, he carries recognition that a generic corporate MC does not. Biography highlights Children’s BBC presenter since 2014, with on-screen credits including BBC Bitesize, Young Dancer, Wimbledon Live and Blue Peter. Runner-up, Strictly Come Dancing series 17 (2019), partnered with Amy Dowden; scored the series’ first perfect 40 in Week 11. Co-presenter of CBBC’s A Week to Beat the World, a factual travel format filmed across Guatemala, Brazil and Japan. Acting credits across The Sparticle Mystery (three series), EastEnders and Da Vinci’s Demons. West End and London Palladium stage credits including The Lion King, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Here Come The Boys. Trained at Sylvia Young Theatre School and the Urdang Academy. Biography A live event is a logistics document until someone walks on stage and turns it into a room. That is the job. Awards nights, internal conferences and brand activations rely on a host who can hold attention without flattening the agenda underneath it. Karim Zeroual has done that work in the most demanding live environment in British television. As a Children’s BBC presenter since 2014, he has fronted BBC Bitesize, Young Dancer, Wimbledon Live and Blue Peter, formats that punish any host who cannot keep pace with a live cue and a moving audience at the same time. The Strictly Come Dancing final in 2019 added a different test. Partnered with Amy Dowden, he reached the runner-up position in front of an audience of millions and scored the series’ first perfect forty for a Week 11 Jive. The discipline that produced that result, weeks of repetition under public scrutiny, is the same discipline that lets a host carry an unscripted stage moment without losing the brief. Stage credits at the London Palladium and across the West End in The Lion King, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Here Come The Boys round out a profile built on live performance rather than recorded craft. For organisations who need a host who can warm a room of two thousand, interview a CEO without flattering them, and shape an awards running order so it actually lands, that combination is what is being booked. Key speaking topics Live event hosting and awards night MC work Panel moderation and on-stage interviews Conference and town hall hosting Brand activation hosting and presenter-led live content Youth engagement and family audience communication On-camera presenting craft Ideal for Internal communications and HR leads booking annual awards nights, recognition events or town halls Brand and marketing teams running consumer-facing activations or family audience events Conference organisers who need a moderator credible across panels, fireside chats and stage interviews Charity and youth-sector organisations where audience trust with younger demographics matters Audience outcomes A live event run by a host who keeps the agenda intact while the room stays warm Panels and interviews that move beyond polite Q and A into useful exchanges Awards moments that feel earned for recipients, not stage-managed A consistent on-stage presence across multiple sessions of a long-form agenda

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 Kari Nixon She brings the historical pattern recognition of a literary scholar trained in 19th-century epidemic narratives to live problems of misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, and corporate trust collapse. Her published work, including “Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19” with Simon and Schuster, gives her a public platform that translates academic rigour into language a board can act on. She has worked the actual mechanics of disinformation as a Norway-based fact-checker for Logically Facts, not just commented on it from the outside. Fluency in Norwegian and English, plus a decade living between the United States and Scandinavia, makes her unusually credible on cross-cultural risk messaging for organisations operating across both markets. She trains scientists, executives, and communicators on the specific point most playbooks miss: framing decides whether data lands or rebounds. Biography highlights Author of “Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19” (Tiller Press, Simon and Schuster, 2021), a public-facing book drawing thirty lessons from past pandemics. Author of the academic monograph “Kept from All Contagion” (SUNY Press) on germ theory and Victorian narrative. Co-editor of “Endemic: Essays in Contagion Theory” and “Theorizing Syphilis and Subjectivity,” both Palgrave Macmillan. PhD, English, Southern Methodist University, 2015. Former Assistant Professor of English at Whitworth University, specialising in medical humanities and Victorian literature. Norway-based fact-checker at Logically Facts; bylines at CNN, HuffPost, and YES! Magazine. Biography The way an institution names a risk shapes whether the public obeys, ignores, or revolts against it. Kari Nixon spent her academic career inside that question, reading how Victorian Britain talked itself through cholera, syphilis, and tuberculosis, then watched the same patterns repeat in real time during COVID-19. That double vantage, historical scholar and live observer, produced “Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19” with Simon and Schuster’s Tiller Press, a book that translates two centuries of epidemic communication failures into operating lessons for the present. Her academic monograph “Kept from All Contagion” with SUNY Press sits behind it, alongside two co-edited Palgrave Macmillan volumes on contagion theory and the cultural history of disease. She left a faculty role at Whitworth University to work in Norway, including as a fact-checker at Logically Facts, monitoring how disinformation moves on social platforms. The shift from English department to fact desk is the point. Her argument is that risk communication is not a science problem with a comms wrapper. It is a narrative problem with a science core, and the people best placed to fix it are the ones who can read both registers. Her writing has appeared in CNN, HuffPost, and YES! Magazine. She works with science labs on graduate communication training, with corporate teams on crisis framing, and with cross-Atlantic organisations on how a message built for an American audience tends to misfire in a Nordic one, and the reverse. Key speaking topics Risk and crisis communication Misinformation and disinformation in public discourse Public trust in institutions Health communication and vaccine hesitancy Cross-cultural communication between the United States and Europe Narrative framing of contagion and contagion-adjacent risks Media literacy training for organisations Ideal for Communications, public affairs, and corporate affairs leads preparing for reputational or regulatory shocks Health, life sciences, and public sector organisations facing trust deficits with the public they serve Cross-border leadership teams operating between North America and the Nordics Science and research institutions whose technical experts need to speak to non-technical audiences Audience outcomes A working diagnosis of where their current crisis playbook will break under speed, scale, or scepticism Specific historical analogues showing what worked and what backfired when institutions tried to correct misinformation A framework for assessing whether a given message will travel, mutate, or be rejected by its intended audience A clearer sense of how Nordic and Anglo-American audiences read trust signals differently Language they can use the next morning to reframe a contested fact for a sceptical public

Why organisations work with Graeme Hall He arrives with a specific, verifiable thesis: that the psychology of dog training produces better management results than most corporate training frameworks, making his core idea repeatable and memorable long after the event. His 21 years as an operations manager at Weetabix, running teams of 200+, grounds every analogy in real management experience. The dog training lens sharpens the insight; the corporate background makes it credible. The methodology he teaches: clear signals, consistent reinforcement, calm authority, is simple enough to apply the following day. Audiences leave with a model, not a reading list. As the presenter of seven series of a nationally broadcast Channel 5 show, he carries a recognition factor that drives audience engagement before he has said a word. His TEDxLeamingtonSpa talk has been viewed more than 37,000 times. His Sunday Times bestseller status confirms the core ideas have been tested and validated well beyond the speaking circuit. Biography highlights Master Dog Trainer, Guild of Dog Trainers (accredited since 2009); more than 5,000 dogs trained across the UK, Australia, and internationally Presenter, Channel 5’s Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly – seven series since 2017; also presenter of Dog Hospital with Graeme Hall (Channel 5); show distributed internationally to CBC (Canada) and Network 10 (Australia) Sunday Times bestselling author: All Dogs Great and Small (Penguin Books, 2021) and Perfectly Imperfect Puppy (Random House, 2022); further titles include Does My Dog Love Me? (2024) TEDxLeamingtonSpa speaker: “Why using dog training psychology to train people makes sense” (37,000+ views) 21-year career at Weetabix Limited as operations manager, leading teams of 200+; University of Hull graduate Described by The Daily Telegraph as “Britain’s best dog trainer”; monthly columnist, Country Living Magazine; featured on BBC Breakfast, ITV’s This Morning, and in The Yorkshire Vet (2025) Children’s debut The Ultimate Kids’ Guide to Dogs (2024) shortlisted for The Week Junior Book Awards 2025 Biography The hardest part of managing people is not knowing what good looks like, it is getting people to do it consistently. Most management frameworks address process and structure. Fewer address the simpler, less comfortable question: why do people change their behaviour, and why do they not? Graeme Hall spent 21 years as an operations manager at Weetabix, overseeing teams of more than 200 people. When he left to train dogs professionally in 2008, he found that the same principles he had been applying to people: clear communication, consistent reinforcement, calm authority, were precisely what made dog training work. The parallel was not decorative. It was functional. That observation became the foundation of his speaking work. His TEDxLeamingtonSpa talk, “Why using dog training psychology to train people makes sense,” made the case in public. His books All Dogs Great and Small (Penguin, 2021) and Perfectly Imperfect Puppy (Random House, 2022) both became Sunday Times bestsellers, drawing on a methodology grounded in behavioural science and tested across more than 5,000 training cases. As presenter of Channel 5’s Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly – now in its seventh series, with audiences across the UK, Australia, and Canada – Hall combines national media recognition with a management insight that is both immediately applicable and genuinely difficult to forget. The Daily Telegraph has described him as “Britain’s best dog trainer.” Organisations hire him when they want a session that is entertaining, practical, and still being talked about the following week. Key speaking topics Behavioural psychology applied to people management Communication, clarity, and consistency in leadership Motivation and behaviour change Team performance and getting the best from people Science-backed management and habit formation Storytelling and audience engagement Ideal for Line managers and team leaders seeking practical, immediately applicable tools for improving team behaviour and performance HR directors and people teams planning leadership development days, away days, or company-wide culture initiatives Conference and event organisers seeking a high-recognition keynote with crossover entertainment and business value SME owners and entrepreneurs managing growing teams and the communication challenges that growth creates Audience outcomes A simple, memorable model for communicating expectations clearly and reinforcing the behaviours they want – without conflict or complexity A reframe of everyday management challenges through behavioural science, making abstract concepts concrete and immediately actionable Practical techniques for addressing difficult team behaviours calmly and consistently, drawn from Hall’s 5,000-case training methodology Greater confidence in having direct conversations about performance and conduct A central idea – the dog training management parallel – that is memorable enough to repeat to colleagues and durable enough to apply over time

Why organisations work with Ryan Serhant He built a brokerage that uses its own studio as the primary lead source, giving sales and marketing leaders a working reference for how content-to-commerce actually operates at scale. He has closed close to ten billion dollars in personal real estate sales while running the firm, including the most expensive home ever sold in Florida, so the methodology comes from a practitioner still in the deal flow. His three books, Sell It Like Serhant, Big Money Energy, and Brand It Like Serhant, sequence a coherent commercial argument from individual sales technique to personal brand as a business asset. He is one of the few operators booked at this level whose audience already knows the work through Netflix’s Owning Manhattan and Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York, which compresses the credibility step at large commercial events. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of SERHANT., a brokerage with an in-house film studio used as its lead-generation engine. Star and executive producer of Netflix’s Owning Manhattan; star of Bravo’s two-time Emmy-nominated Million Dollar Listing New York. Author of Sell It Like Serhant (2018), Big Money Energy (2021), and Brand It Like Serhant (2024). The Serhant Team ranked top sales team in New York by The Wall Street Journal for three consecutive years and Top 5 nationwide. Closed close to ten billion dollars in personal sales, including record-setting transactions in New York and Florida. Founder of SERHANT. Studios and the SELL IT digital education platform. Biography Most brokerages still treat marketing as a cost centre and the salesforce as the engine. SERHANT., the firm Ryan Serhant founded in September 2020, inverts that. The studio is the engine. The agents convert the demand it generates. Owning Manhattan, the Netflix series Serhant produces and stars in, is part of the same flywheel. That model is the reason commercial leaders book him. Serhant has closed close to ten billion dollars in personal real estate sales, including the most expensive home ever sold in Florida, while running the firm. The point on stage is not the listings. It is what an operating model looks like when content production, personal brand, and sales pipeline are run as a single discipline rather than three departments. His three books trace the same argument at different altitudes. Sell It Like Serhant (2018) is a salesperson’s playbook. Big Money Energy (2021) reframes ambition as a discipline that can be coached. Brand It Like Serhant (2024) treats personal and corporate brand as a measurable commercial asset that produces inbound demand. Together they are the spine of his keynote work and the SELL IT education platform that grew out of the first book. The Serhant Team was ranked the top sales team in New York by The Wall Street Journal for three consecutive years before he launched the brokerage. Million Dollar Listing New York, the two-time Emmy-nominated Bravo series, gave the broader audience the character. Owning Manhattan, now in its second Netflix season, gives them the company. Key speaking topics Content-to-commerce business models Sales methodology and pipeline Personal brand as a commercial asset Entrepreneurship and scale-up Customer acquisition and lead generation Founder mindset and commercial ambition Ideal for Chief revenue officers and heads of sales rebuilding pipeline economics around content Chief marketing officers integrating brand, social, and demand generation into one operating function Founders and CEOs of scale-up businesses building category presence Sales conferences, kickoffs, and partner events for high-ticket and brokerage businesses Audience outcomes A working picture of how an in-house content engine can function as the primary acquisition channel A clearer line between personal brand investment and measurable revenue A sales operating logic drawn from a practitioner who is still closing deals at the top of the market Language and frameworks senior leaders can take back to their commercial teams the next morning

Why organisations work with Eliza VanCort A working method for executive presence rooted in Meisner acting technique, not generic confidence coaching. Voice, posture and physicality are treated as trainable instruments, not personality traits. An intersectional lens that takes inclusion past slogans. Her sessions address how mansplaining, interruption, and microaggression actually move through a meeting, and what a leader can do in the moment. A bestselling book, A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space, that gives delegates a structured framework before and after the room, with named behaviours and language. Mainstream media reach. Appearances on The Drew Barrymore Show, Forbes, Fast Company and CNBC give her work cultural traction outside corporate L&D, which travels with audiences. Co-founder of Think Twice Labs with Alma Derricks, former CMO of Cirque du Soleil, building emotional intelligence and cross-difference communication tools used inside organisations. Biography highlights Author of A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space: Stand Tall. Raise Your Voice. Be Heard, Berrett-Koehler, May 2021. Cook House Fellow, Cornell University. TEDxRochester speaker, “Women, Power and Revolutionizing Speech”. Founder of The Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca, a Meisner Technique studio. Co-founder of Think Twice Labs with Alma Derricks, former CMO of Cirque du Soleil. Featured in The Drew Barrymore Show, Forbes, Fast Company, CNBC, and Success magazine. Biography Most executive presence work treats authority as a personality trait. Eliza VanCort treats it as a craft. Her starting point is that voice, posture and language are trainable instruments, the same way an actor’s are, and that women and underrepresented leaders are routinely operating those instruments inside rooms that were not built for them. That argument has a specific origin. She founded The Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca, the region’s Meisner Technique studio, and spent years teaching how performers hold a stage. She then applied the same discipline to meeting rooms and boardrooms. A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space, published by Berrett-Koehler in 2021, sets out the framework: five behaviours that shift how a leader is read, from posture and vocal placement to ending self-sabotage and building cross-difference coalitions. The work has reach beyond corporate L&D. Her TEDxRochester talk on women, power and speech has been viewed widely. Appearances on The Drew Barrymore Show, Forbes, Fast Company and CNBC have built a public audience of more than 250,000 followers. Inside organisations, she co-founded Think Twice Labs with Alma Derricks, former CMO of Cirque du Soleil, to translate the same material into emotional intelligence and communication tools teams can use across difference. She is a Cook House Fellow at Cornell University and an advisory board member of Performing Arts for Social Change. The intellectual frame is intersectional: most of her organisational work is about what happens to people with less institutional power when they intersect with structures designed around someone else’s authority. The output is concrete. Delegates leave with named behaviours, specific language and a vocabulary for the dynamics they have been navigating without naming for years. Key speaking topics Executive presence and communication craft Women in leadership and the politics of voice Anti-racist and cross-difference communication Emotional intelligence in senior teams Inclusion under pressure Confidence, posture and physicality for leaders Power dynamics in everyday workplace interaction Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers building executive-presence programmes for senior women Leadership-development leads designing high-potential and sponsorship pathways ERG sponsors and DEI heads commissioning substantive, non-performative inclusion content Senior women’s leadership summits, partner-track development programmes, and emerging-leader cohorts Audience outcomes A vocabulary for the meeting-room behaviours that quietly cost women authority, and language to interrupt them in the moment Specific techniques for voice, posture and physicality drawn from Meisner training, applied to senior business settings A framework from A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space delegates can carry back into their teams Practical anti-racist and cross-difference communication moves that work inside live conversations, not only in policy documents A clearer reading of how power moves through an organisation’s everyday talk, and where to act on it

Why organisations work with Ken Schmidt He sat inside the room when Harley-Davidson went from near-collapse to one of the most emotionally bonded brands in American business, and he can describe what changed in the company’s positioning rather than what got written about it afterwards. He frames customer loyalty as an operating decision, not a marketing output. His Noise Cubed Trilogy gives leadership teams a structured way to interrogate how they are heard, remembered and chosen. Make Some Noise: The Unconventional Road to Dominance (Simon and Schuster, 2018) gives leaders a written, reusable method for moving a company from product-first to people-first positioning. He works in the language operators use. Sales teams, dealer networks, franchisees and frontline staff respond to him because he treats reputation as something the whole organisation builds, not a head-office function. He is consistently booked for annual sales kickoffs, dealer conferences and leadership offsites where the brief is to change how a workforce thinks about its own market position, not to deliver a generic motivational talk. Biography highlights Director of Corporate and Financial Communications at Harley-Davidson Motor Company, 1990 to 1997; joined the company in 1985. Primary spokesperson to media and financial communities during Harley-Davidson’s turnaround years. Author of Make Some Noise: The Unconventional Road to Dominance, Simon and Schuster, November 2018. Co-creator of 100 Years of Harley-Davidson, an official centenary motorsports title. Founder of Ken Schmidt Company (1999); co-founder of Torque Sessions Leadership Training. Host of the Tailgating with Geniuses business podcast; previously held an ownership stake in Chicago marketing firm VSA Partners. Biography Harley-Davidson was effectively a dying American manufacturer in the mid-1980s. The bikes had reputation problems, the financials were thin, and the brand was the punchline of its own segment. The work that pulled the company out was not a product fix. It was a deliberate reconstruction of how customers, dealers and the financial community thought and talked about the company, and Ken Schmidt was inside that work from 1985. By 1990 he was Director of Corporate and Financial Communications, working directly with the CEO and CFO and serving as the primary voice to the media and investment community during the years sales and brand equity recovered. That seat gave him a particular vantage on how reputation actually gets engineered inside a company under pressure, and on how leadership decisions about positioning translate into customer behaviour on the ground. After leaving Harley in 1997 he took an ownership position at Chicago marketing firm VSA Partners, then founded Ken Schmidt Company in 1999. Make Some Noise: The Unconventional Road to Dominance (Simon and Schuster, 2018) sets out his method for moving a company from product-first to people-first positioning; his Torque Sessions training format and Tailgating with Geniuses podcast extend the same operating logic. The argument he brings to a leadership room is that competitive advantage built on product specifications is now mostly perishable, and the durable form of advantage is being chosen on purpose by customers who feel something specific about the company. That is a hard claim to make credibly. It is harder to make from the inside of a brand that did it. Key speaking topics Customer loyalty and advocacy Brand positioning and reputation Competitive differentiation People-first organisational culture Storytelling and corporate voice Sales force and dealer-network alignment Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Brand Officers and customer-experience leadership teams. Sales leadership at companies running annual kickoffs, dealer conferences or franchise summits. CEO and executive teams in mature categories where product parity is eroding margins. Membership organisations, associations and trade bodies needing to reset how they are perceived. Audience outcomes A sharper internal language for what their company is actually known for, versus what it claims to be known for. Schmidt’s three-question Noise Cubed framework, useable as a working tool on positioning decisions. A concrete view of how the Harley-Davidson turnaround changed customer behaviour, with the operator-side mechanics named. A reframing of customer loyalty as something every part of the business builds, not a marketing or CX function output.

Why organisations work with Chris Voss He brings a method built in the only setting where negotiation failure is counted in lives, then translated into vocabulary sales, procurement, and executive teams can apply on Monday. Tactical Empathy, mirroring, labeling, and calibrated questions are named, teachable moves, which means the approach survives the room and becomes company muscle memory rather than a memorable keynote. The Black Swan Group is a working consultancy, so the same principles that land on stage can be extended into deal-desk coaching, procurement clinics, and bespoke leadership training. His credibility reads instantly to a sceptical senior audience: 24 years in the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit, the US National Security Council Hostage Working Group, lead negotiator on the Jill Carroll and Steve Centanni cases. “Never Split the Difference” has made his vocabulary common currency across revenue, HR, and leadership functions, so a keynote plugs into language teams already recognise. Biography highlights Former FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator, 2003 to 2007, inside a 24-year FBI career across more than 150 international hostage cases. Founder and CEO of The Black Swan Group, a negotiation training and consulting firm serving corporate clients globally. Co-author of “Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It” with Tahl Raz, reported at more than 5 million copies sold. Adjunct professor at Harvard Law School and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business; lecturer at the USC Marshall School of Business. Represented the FBI on the US National Security Council’s Hostage Working Group. Instructor of the MasterClass “Chris Voss Teaches the Art of Negotiation”; recipient of the Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement. Biography Jill Carroll was held in Iraq. Steve Centanni was held in Gaza. Chris Voss was the lead FBI negotiator on both. That is the operational record that sits underneath his commercial work, and it is why his language about negotiation reads differently from most of what senior teams have heard before. For 24 years inside the FBI, including four as the Bureau’s lead international kidnapping negotiator, he worked cases where concession logic, position-trading, and splitting the difference were not available moves. The alternative he developed, and later named Tactical Empathy, is a discipline of understanding the counterpart’s emotional world accurately enough to influence the decision in front of them. Mirroring, labeling, and calibrated questions are the operating components. In 2008 he founded The Black Swan Group to teach that discipline to commercial teams, and in 2016 he codified it with Tahl Raz in “Never Split the Difference”. The book has moved more than 5 million copies and reshaped how sales, procurement, legal, and executive teams in large organisations talk about difficult conversations. He has carried the same material into classrooms at Harvard Law School, Georgetown McDonough, and USC Marshall. What buyers get when they book him is the original source of that vocabulary, with the cases that generated it. The US National Security Council’s Hostage Working Group asked him to represent the FBI on it. The Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement went to him on the strength of the same work. A room of senior commercial leaders is a softer setting than the one that built his method, which is precisely why the method holds. Key speaking topics High-stakes negotiation Tactical empathy and influence Sales and commercial negotiation Procurement and deal-desk strategy Crisis communication Leadership under pressure Conflict resolution Ideal for Chief Revenue Officers, sales leadership, and enterprise account teams preparing for contested renewals and complex deals. Chief Procurement Officers and commercial directors leading supplier and cost negotiations with long-term partners. C-suite and board audiences managing stakeholder, activist, regulator, or crisis conversations where positions harden fast. Senior legal, HR, and people leaders handling disputes, restructurings, and executive-level conflict. Audience outcomes Specific language moves (mirroring, labeling, calibrated questions) the audience can test in their next live call. A reframe of empathy as a commercial tool, separated from concession and rapport. A shared vocabulary across revenue, procurement, and leadership functions for the deals and disputes that matter. Sharper preparation habits for high-stakes conversations, including how to identify the “Black Swans” that reset a negotiation. Confidence handling the counterpart who will not move, drawn from cases where not moving had life-or-death consequences.