Storytelling & Business Communication speakers

Why organisations work with Carl Leighton-Pope He has sustained a boutique agency relationship with artists like Bryan Adams, Michael Bublé and Billy Ocean across decades of contractual and technological upheaval, which is rare evidence of how to keep large clients inside a small business. The catalogue of names is its own form of credibility: the Marquee Club in 1964, Dire Straits and Simple Minds at NEMS, The Chippendales as a touring product, WWE and Harlem Globetrotters in Europe. Few speakers can draw on a working roster of this length. He is, in commercial terms, an entrepreneur who diversified beyond his core: from agency work into management, into theatre production with Carnaby Street The Musical and LOVE, and into international touring across genres outside music. The delivery is built for audiences who want a senior business story told with humour and specific characters, not a framework deck. Useful for after-dinner, leadership offsites, and entrepreneurial events where the room wants substance carried by narrative. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, Leighton-Pope Organisation, London (incorporated 1991, Companies House 02634876). Career began in 1964 at the Marquee Club in Soho, working in an environment that included Rod Stewart, The Who and Eric Clapton. Former agent at NEMS, where he signed Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Patti Smith, The Motors, UFO and Camel. Signed Bryan Adams as an agency client in 1984 and has subsequently represented Michael Bublé, Billy Ocean, Van Morrison, Bonnie Tyler, Chris Rea, Keith Urban and Jeff Healey. Producer and international tour operator for The Chippendales, and his agency has handled WWE and Harlem Globetrotters tours. Writer and producer of Carnaby Street The Musical and the West End play LOVE (2023). Biography The music business has been rebuilt three times in a single working lifetime. Vinyl gave way to CDs, CDs to downloads, downloads to streaming, and the contractual and revenue logic underneath each change tore through agency businesses that could not adapt. The Leighton-Pope Organisation, founded in London in 1991, has carried the same artists across most of that turbulence. That continuity is the credential. Bryan Adams, signed in 1984 while Carl was still building his agency career, remains a client. Michael Bublé and Billy Ocean sit on the current roster alongside historical clients like Van Morrison, Bonnie Tyler, Chris Rea and Keith Urban. Earlier in his career, working at NEMS, he signed Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Patti Smith, The Motors, UFO and Camel. The names matter because they are the proof of an agency model that has held under load. The career began in 1964 at the Marquee Club in Soho. By 1972 he was running a recording studio in Cardiff and managing the band Sassafras on Chrysalis Records. The Leighton-Pope Organisation followed in 1991 and has since extended beyond music into international touring for The Chippendales, WWE and the Harlem Globetrotters, and into theatre production with Carnaby Street The Musical and the West End play LOVE in 2023. The speaking work draws directly on that operating history. The substance is entrepreneurship inside a creative industry, told through specific decisions, specific clients and specific deals over six decades. Audiences leave with named cases and the texture of how a small business keeps very large clients. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship in the entertainment industry Talent identification and long-term client retention Building a boutique business with global clients Diversification beyond a core service line Music industry reinvention across format cycles Business storytelling for leadership audiences Ideal for Entrepreneurs and founder-led businesses scaling around a small senior team. CEO and board offsites where the brief is business reflection through narrative rather than framework. After-dinner and gala audiences at industry conferences and corporate events. Leadership programmes covering client relationship longevity and creative industry commercial models. Audience outcomes A working understanding of how a boutique agency retains top-tier clients across decades and format changes. Specific cases on signing, developing and managing globally commercial artists. A view on diversification decisions taken across music, live entertainment and theatre. Material on entrepreneurial judgement under industry-wide disruption, drawn from a six-decade career.

Why organisations work with Catherine Hunt She has sat in the editor’s chair at the BBC’s flagship evening news, deciding what leads, what gets cut, and how a story is framed for millions of viewers. Few communications advisors have made those calls in real time. Her training is editorial, not presentational. She works on what a leader is actually saying and in what order, before any work on delivery, which is where most media coaching starts. She has worked across local press, national newspapers, the Press Association, and BBC television, which means she knows how the same story moves and mutates across formats. She runs CHC Media as a working consultancy, so her advice draws on current client engagements rather than archived BBC experience. Biography highlights Editor of the BBC Six O’Clock News, the corporation’s main early-evening television bulletin. Edited live BBC coverage of major domestic and international news events. Reporter for the Press Association and the Daily Mail before joining the BBC. Began in regional journalism at the Evening Argus in Brighton. Founder of CHC Media, a communications consultancy advising private and public sector clients. Author of the psychological thriller “Someone Out There,” set in Brighton. Biography The work of editing a national news bulletin is the work of deciding what matters in the next thirty minutes. Catherine Hunt did that for the BBC Six O’Clock News, one of the UK’s most-watched television programmes, choosing which stories led, which were cut for time, and how complex events were translated for a general audience. That seat carries an editorial discipline that very few communications professionals have ever held. Hunt came to the BBC after a career in print. She started at the Evening Argus in Brighton, then reported for the Press Association and the Daily Mail before moving into broadcast as a producer. Across those roles, she learned how the same fact reads differently in a wire copy line, a tabloid lead, and a televised top story. That cross-format fluency now sits underneath her advisory work. Through her consultancy CHC Media, Hunt advises private and public sector clients on the same questions she handled in the gallery: what is the story, who is it for, and what is the cleanest way to land it. The practical content is editorial first, presentational second. Leaders work on the structure and ordering of what they want to say before anything is done about how they say it. Her work suits the senior client who has to communicate something difficult and knows that the words will be recorded, clipped, and replayed. She wrote a psychological thriller in 2015, “Someone Out There,” set in Brighton, which she covered as a young reporter, which sits alongside her advisory practice as evidence of a lifetime spent on how stories are built. Key speaking topics Media interviews and high-stakes communication Newsroom decision-making and editorial judgement Message structure and prioritisation for senior leaders Crisis communications and breaking-news coverage Storytelling for public and private sector audiences The journalist’s view of corporate communications Ideal for Executive teams preparing for media interviews, regulator hearings, or analyst calls Communications and public affairs leads building internal media-skills programmes Boards and senior leaders rehearsing crisis statements and town halls Conference organisers needing an experienced moderator or panel chair with a journalist’s instinct Audience outcomes A clearer view of how a national newsroom would treat their story, and what that means for what to say first A sharper sense of which message belongs at the top of a statement, and which sits below the line Practical instincts for handling difficult interviews, hostile questions, and breaking news pressure Confidence in editing their own communications down to what actually matters

Why organisations work with Catherine Mayer She has reported on power at the most senior editorial level, as Europe Editor and Editor at Large of TIME, and then tried to rebuild it, by founding a national political party. Few speakers on inclusion have done both. Her book Attack of the Fifty Foot Women reframes gender equality as an economic and institutional argument, not a values statement, which makes it usable in a boardroom conversation about strategy and risk. She can talk about royal institutions, political parties and global newsrooms from the inside, which gives senior audiences a sharper read on how hierarchical organisations actually work. Her writing on ageing (Amortality) and grief (Good Grief) gives her authority on two subjects most workplaces handle badly: longer working lives and bereavement in the workforce. She is a working journalist by training, which shows in the room. Arguments are specific, sourced and willing to be challenged. Biography highlights Senior editor at TIME magazine from 2004 to 2015, serving as London Bureau Chief, Europe Editor and Editor at Large. Co-founder, with Sandi Toksvig, of the UK Women’s Equality Party in March 2015, and its President. Author of Attack of the Fifty Foot Women, Amortality, Charles: The Heart of a King and Good Grief. Winner of the Foreign Press Association «Story of the Year» award, 2010, and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, 2011. Co-founder of the Primadonna Festival of ideas, writing and music, and advisory board member of NOON. Former President of the Foreign Press Association in London, 2003 to 2005; began her career at The Economist. Biography Gender equality inside large institutions has become a paradox. Reports, networks and policies have multiplied, yet the shape of senior power has moved far less than the paperwork suggests. Catherine Mayer has spent her career watching this pattern from two very different sides. For more than a decade at TIME magazine, she reported on presidents, prime ministers and royal courts as Europe Editor and Editor at Large, with her 2010 cover story on David Cameron’s first US visit winning the Foreign Press Association «Story of the Year» and her writing shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2011. Her biography Charles: The Heart of a King drew on years of access to the British royal household and generated international headlines for what it revealed about how closed institutions actually operate. In March 2015, with Sandi Toksvig, she co-founded the Women’s Equality Party and served as its President until the party was dissolved in 2024. Attack of the Fifty Foot Women grew out of that work and argues, in hard economic and political terms, that closing the gender gap is the single largest lever available to most societies. Amortality examines the other structural story reshaping workplaces: longer lives and the collapse of age-based expectations about careers. Good Grief, written with her mother Anne Mayer Bird after they were widowed within 41 days of each other at the start of the pandemic, has made her one of the more candid public voices on bereavement at work. She co-founded the Primadonna Festival in Suffolk in 2019 and sits on the advisory board of NOON. Senior teams book her when they want an argument about institutional change that has been tested against real media, real politics and real loss. Key speaking topics Gender equality as institutional and economic strategy Power, hierarchy and how closed institutions operate Media, journalism and political accountability Ageing, longevity and the multigenerational workforce Grief and bereavement in the workplace Founding and running a new political organisation Culture change inside legacy organisations Ideal for Executive teams and boards reviewing gender, inclusion and cultural change strategy CHROs and Chief People Officers looking beyond policy to institutional redesign Leadership conferences on media, politics and public trust Employee network summits and international women’s events with a senior audience Audience outcomes A sharper account of why most inclusion programmes stall, drawn from politics, media and royal institutions, not consultancy theory An economic and institutional case for gender equality that a CFO or board member can use A clearer view of how longer lives and multigenerational workforces change talent strategy Usable language for how organisations should talk to staff about grief and bereavement A journalist’s scepticism about the difference between corporate announcement and actual structural change

Why organisations work with Charlotte Richardson She works live on national radio and television every week, including TalkSport, BBC Final Score, Times Radio Breakfast and Charlton TV, which is the same craft that internal conferences and awards evenings need on stage. She is TalkSport’s first female commentator and the first woman to commentate for TalkSport at a Women’s World Cup, which gives a content keynote on inclusion in male-dominated industries genuine first-person material rather than a borrowed argument. She moves between formats inside a single booking: opening host, panel moderator, on-stage interviewer of a senior leader, awards announcer, after-dinner host. For organisations programming a women in sport or inclusion strand alongside an event, she can host the day and deliver the keynote, which removes a second booking and keeps tone consistent. Biography highlights TalkSport’s first female commentator, covering the men’s football pyramid, the Women’s Super League and the Women’s Championship across TalkSport and TalkSport 2. Reporter on BBC Final Score, the BBC’s prime-time Saturday afternoon football results programme. Sports analyst and contributor on Times Radio Breakfast. Co-host of In The Box, the England Football podcast produced with the FA’s grassroots football team. Pitch-side presenter and live broadcast host for Charlton Athletic’s Charlton TV at The Valley. Began her career on the operator side of the industry in sports marketing and communications before moving into broadcasting via BBC local radio. Biography Live football radio is unforgiving. The match does not pause for a missed cue, the crowd noise does not let a commentator catch a breath, and the audience can tell within thirty seconds whether the voice on air knows the game. Charlotte Richardson commentates on it weekly for TalkSport, the UK’s largest commercial sports network, and was the first woman the station put in that chair. Her broadcasting career started in BBC local radio and progressed to Final Score, the BBC’s Saturday afternoon football programme, before TalkSport. She now covers the full men’s pyramid, the Women’s Super League and the Women’s Championship across TalkSport and TalkSport 2, reports on Times Radio Breakfast, and hosts pitch-side and live coverage for Charlton Athletic’s Charlton TV. With Tom Lee she co-presents In The Box, the FA’s England Football podcast on grassroots football. That mix of live commentary, pitch-side presenting and studio analysis is the relevant credential for corporate work. Awards evenings, customer conferences and internal events run on the same skills: pace, recovery, the right question to a senior leader on stage, the ability to cover a gap in the running order without showing it. Richardson does that work in front of national audiences every week. She also has a content keynote that most hosts do not. Becoming the first woman to commentate for TalkSport at a Women’s World Cup, and on the men’s football pyramid more broadly, gives her a first-person account of inclusion in a male-dominated industry that an organisation programming a women’s network event, an International Women’s Day moment, or a sports-themed internal day can build a session around. Key speaking topics Conference and awards hosting Panel moderation and on-stage interviewing Women in sport Inclusion in male-dominated industries Sports broadcasting and live event craft Ideal for Internal women’s network events and International Women’s Day programmes Annual customer and partner conferences requiring a host and moderator Internal awards and recognition evenings Sponsor and hospitality events around football and major sporting fixtures Audience outcomes A live event that holds pace, recovers cleanly when something slips, and lands its recognition moments. Panels and senior leader interviews that produce direct answers rather than rehearsed lines. A first-person account of breaking into a male-dominated industry that an inclusion strand can be built around.

Why organisations work with Charlotte Storey She trains leaders in the craft of presence using the same technical toolkit she used on stage: voice, physicality, and mindset under observation. Most executive coaching talks about presence. Hers drills it. She has coached the Royal Marines Band through two of the most scrutinised live performances in recent British history: the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III. The stakes reference is not theoretical. Her work on disability inclusion is grounded in her own route into a commercial pilot’s seat with one arm, which gives her a specific, operational view on how hiring and development systems overlook non-standard candidates. Her method is concrete and demonstrable in the room: accent work, physical embodiment, vocal control, and anxiety regulation. Audiences leave with techniques they can rehearse, not concepts they have to translate. She bridges two audiences that rarely share a speaker: performance-anxious specialists (musicians, surgeons, pilots, public-facing executives) and HR and inclusion leaders working on disability at senior levels. Biography highlights Former West End actor and professional saxophonist, now working as a performance and communication coach to senior leaders. Gained a UK pilot’s licence in 2021 and flies a light aircraft as pilot in command, having lost the use of her right arm in 2008. Coached HM Royal Marines Band through the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III. Delivered a 2023 keynote at the Lockheed Martin UK Leader Conference, described by CEO Paul Livingston as the most impactful presentation seen at the annual conference. Client roster includes the BBC, Disney, Nickelodeon, the Bank of England, NatWest, the European Business Aviation Association, Warburtons, and Homebase. Lives with Ehlers-Danlos Hypermobility Syndrome and speaks from direct experience on the practical mechanics of disability in high-performance careers. Biography The Royal Marines Band rehearsed for months before the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III. Charlotte Storey was the performance coach they brought in to handle the part of the job that does not show up in a music score: staying composed when the eyes of the world are on the ensemble and there is no room for a wrong note. That commission captures the work. Storey started in the West End as an actor and professional saxophonist, then moved into elite voice and acting coaching in UK conservatoires before her current career as a speaker and executive coach. Her specialism is what happens to people technically and physically when the pressure rises: voice tightens, breath shortens, attention collapses inward. She trains it out of them. The second strand of her work comes from lived experience. In 2008 she lost the use of her right arm following complications of Ehlers-Danlos Hypermobility Syndrome. In 2021, afraid of heights and working with a disability that grounds most pilots, she gained her licence and now flies as pilot in command. That route into the cockpit informs her work on disability inclusion, which she treats as an operational question about how organisations find and promote non-standard talent, not a values statement. Her keynote list runs from Lockheed Martin UK’s Leader Conference to the BBC, Disney, Nickelodeon, the Bank of England, NatWest, and the European Business Aviation Association. The through-line is the same: a practitioner teaching senior people how to perform, in the craft sense of the word, when it matters most. Key speaking topics Executive presence and the craft of performing under pressure Performance anxiety in high-stakes professional settings Non-verbal communication and vocal authority for senior leaders Disability inclusion in senior hiring and promotion Self-mastery and composure for client-facing and public-facing roles Audacious leadership and risk tolerance in technical careers Team dynamics in elite ensembles and high-performance units Ideal for CHROs, heads of leadership development, and DEI leaders working on presence, progression, and disability inclusion at senior levels. Executive teams preparing for high-stakes external appearances: investor days, regulatory hearings, media, large-scale town halls. Specialist professional communities where composure under scrutiny is part of the job: aviation, defence, surgery, financial services, broadcasting. Conferences seeking an inspirational keynote that has craft content underneath, not only a personal story. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for what presence is made of, with specific techniques for voice, breath, and physical positioning. Practical tools for regulating performance anxiety before high-stakes appearances. A sharper view of how hiring and promotion systems filter out disabled and non-standard candidates, and what changes that. A reset on the role of rehearsal and craft in senior leadership, drawn from performing arts practice. A direct experience of the techniques in the room, delivered by a speaker trained to hold the space.

Why organisations work with Chris Brogan A defined framework for online influence, not just opinions about it. Trust Agents named what separates real customer traction from noise, and the CREATE equation in The Impact Equation turned the same idea into a model a marketing team can actually apply to a campaign. Three decades of working through every online wave in real time. He was blogging before the term existed, co-founded the PodCamp unconference series in 2006, and signed up as the 10,212th user on Twitter. His read on what AI will do to marketing is calibrated by having been early on the last four platform shifts. Credibility with the brands others want to sell into. Disney, Google, General Motors, Microsoft, Coke, PepsiCo, Cisco, Humana, and Sony USA have all retained him as a consultant or keynote speaker. He has sat inside the marketing functions of the companies most audiences are trying to reach. A thousand keynotes’ worth of calibration. Audiences have ranged from the Coldwell Banker GenBLUE conference to the royalty of the United Arab Emirates. Forbes named him one of its Must Follow Marketing Minds; Success magazine commissioned him to interview Richard Branson for its cover story. Biography highlights New York Times bestselling co-author of Trust Agents with Julien Smith (John Wiley & Sons, 2009; 10th Anniversary Edition 2019), also a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Author or co-author of nine business books, including The Impact Equation (Portfolio, 2012) and The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth (Wiley, 2014). Named by Forbes as one of its Must Follow Marketing Minds of 2014; chrisbrogan.com listed by Forbes among the 100 best websites for entrepreneurs. Co-founder of the PodCamp new-media unconference series (launched 2006 with Christopher S. Penn). Former monthly columnist at Entrepreneur magazine; featured in The Boston Globe, Forbes, Success, and USA Today; appeared on the Dr. Phil Show. Over a thousand keynote speeches delivered to clients including Disney, Google, General Motors, Microsoft, Coke, PepsiCo, Cisco, Humana, and Sony USA. Biography The cost of reaching customers online has fallen dramatically. The cost of earning their belief has climbed. Trust Agents, the 2009 New York Times bestseller Chris Brogan co-authored with Julien Smith, was among the first mainstream business books to name this problem. Its argument was that influence online accrues the way reputation does anywhere else, through consistent and useful contact with a defined community. The book’s “trust agent” framework set a vocabulary for a commercial category. With AI now flooding every inbox and feed with plausible noise, the framework has aged unusually well. The follow-up, The Impact Equation, made the same argument operational. Impact equals Contrast multiplied by the sum of Reach, Exposure, Articulation, Trust, and Echo. The formula tells a marketing team which of five dials to turn when campaigns underperform. Brogan’s work has been tested inside some of the companies with the most to lose on this question: Disney, Google, Microsoft, General Motors, Coke, Cisco, Humana, Sony USA. His authority on this stretches back further than most in the category. He was blogging before the term existed, co-founded the PodCamp unconference series in 2006 with Christopher S. Penn, and was signed up as the 10,212th user of Twitter. Forbes has listed him among its Must Follow Marketing Minds and named chrisbrogan.com one of the 100 best websites for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur magazine ran his monthly column for years; Success commissioned him to interview Richard Branson for its cover. The point Brogan keeps returning to in keynotes and advisory work is commercial. Every competitor runs broadly the same automation stack and the same CRM vendors. The organisations that win real customer loyalty are the ones willing to do slower, more specific work for a defined audience. A thousand keynotes across audiences from the Coldwell Banker GenBLUE conference to the royalty of the United Arab Emirates is the track record that stands behind the argument. Key speaking topics Trust and influence in digital markets Customer relationships in the age of AI marketing Content strategy and online community building The CREATE framework for campaign impact Human-centred approaches to digital transformation Executive leadership in a distracted marketplace Ideal for CMOs and marketing leaders rebuilding channel strategy as paid reach plateaus and AI transforms audience behaviour Sales and customer experience leaders responsible for converting digital attention into durable revenue Communications and corporate affairs teams rethinking how their organisation earns trust at scale Founders and senior operators in content-heavy businesses where audience, community, and media are the core assets Audience outcomes A usable way of diagnosing where marketing effort is being wasted, drawn from the CREATE equation A sharper read on where AI and automation extend customer relationships and where they erode them Shared vocabulary for internal debates about attention, trust, and audience value Specific examples from Fortune 500 marketing functions that clarify what “doing business the human way” looks like in practice

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.

Why organisations work with Christian Gansch His work draws directly on the governance and communication structures of professional orchestras to diagnose alignment failures inside organisations – not as analogy, but as operational system analysis. Leaders leave with a replicable model, not just a perspective. His 14 years as a senior producer at Deutsche Grammophon (1990-2003) mean he has exercised genuine executive authority – across production, marketing, sales, and commercial strategy – inside a major global institution. This is the experience of a manager who performed at the highest level, not a performer who later studied management. His book «From Solo to Symphony» (2006) gives his framework a named, tested structure that organisations can return to. The central argument – that orchestras are precision operating systems, not just inspiring metaphors – is the intellectual spine of every engagement. He puts a question to leadership teams that most frameworks avoid: how many high-performing soloists can a team accommodate before individual excellence starts to fracture collective output? The orchestra offers a concrete, daily-tested answer. He speaks and consults in both English and German, making him an operationally practical choice for pan-European organisations and those with significant DACH-region leadership presence. Biography highlights Leader (concertmaster) of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra from 1981 to 1990 Senior producer at Deutsche Grammophon from 1990 to 2003; responsible for approximately 190 classical recordings including productions with Pierre Boulez, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Lang Lang, and Anna Netrebko Multiple Grammy Award winner as a producer; recipient of the Record Academy Award Tokyo (Gold) in the Best Concerto Disc category Conducted major orchestras internationally, including the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, and BBC National Orchestra of Wales BBC Proms debut at the Royal Albert Hall; conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the orchestra and chorus of Teatro La Fenice, Venice; opera credits include Le nozze di Figaro with Opera North Author of «From Solo to Symphony – What businesses can learn from orchestras» (2006) and a second German-language business book; corporate consulting and keynote work with clients including Airbus, BASF, Deloitte, and Roche since 2003 Biography Christian Gansch spent a decade as leader of the Munich Philharmonic. He then spent fourteen years as a senior producer at Deutsche Grammophon. In both roles, the daily challenge was identical: turning highly skilled, independently minded specialists into a functioning collective. His book «From Solo to Symphony» (2006) makes a specific argument from that experience. Professional orchestras are not simply compelling analogies for corporate life – they are operational systems, with precise structures for authority, communication, and coordination. Most large organisations have never consciously built those structures. The gap shows up in execution. His 190 recordings at Deutsche Grammophon were produced across commercial, artistic, and logistical functions simultaneously. That cross-functional executive experience – managing complexity at the level of a major global label – is what separates his framework from that of performers who later turned to speaking. Gansch operated inside the institution, not just on stage. Since 2003, his consulting and keynote work has taken him to organisations including Airbus, BASF, Deloitte, and Roche. The question he brings to every leadership engagement is the one an orchestra solves in every rehearsal: when each individual in the room is an expert in their own domain, what structure of communication and authority allows the group to act as one? Key speaking topics Orchestral leadership and organisational alignment High-performance team dynamics in expert-driven environments Communication and authority structures in complex organisations Leadership decision-making under pressure Managing the tension between individual excellence and collective output Change readiness and adaptability Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams working on alignment, coordination, and collective performance CHROs and organisational development leads designing performance culture in large, expert-heavy organisations Executive conferences and leadership summits with DACH-region or international audiences Organisations in professional services, engineering, or life sciences navigating cross-functional complexity Audience outcomes A named operational framework – the orchestral model – for thinking about authority, communication, and coordination in large organisations Specific diagnostic questions for their own leadership teams about the relationship between individual performance and collective output A clearer vocabulary for the gap between team capability and team alignment – and what structures close it Practical perspectives on decision-making under pressure, drawn from the specific demands of conducting at the highest level A changed understanding of what «communication» requires at an organisational level, beyond cultural aspiration

Why organisations work with Christian Howes He reads social and behavioural data the way a broadcaster reads a room, which means boards and marketing teams leave with a view of their customers that feels observed rather than modelled. He has been trusted on live television, from Big Brother’s Bit on the Side with Emma Willis to BT Sport and Channel 4’s alternative election night, to make data intelligible to audiences who are not data people. His corporate work spans PlayStation, Diageo, HSBC, Lloyds, ASOS and Barclays, so he arrives already fluent in the commercial contexts most clients are operating in. He doubles as a host, MC and panel moderator, which makes him a practical choice for events that want one credible voice across keynote, stage linking and awards. Biography highlights Regular social-data contributor on Big Brother’s Bit on the Side (Channel 5), 2011-2012, alongside Emma Willis. Television appearances on BT Sport (The Clare Balding Show, BT Sport Panel, BT Sport Live), ITV’s This Morning, BBC1 National Lottery, Good Morning Britain, and Channel 4’s alternative election night coverage. Co-founder of Mr Bridger, a content business developing formats for production companies and broadcasters. Corporate and keynote work with Sony PlayStation, Diageo, HSBC, RBS, Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, ASOS, UMG, Channel 4, GoCompare, Skoda, Microsoft, Teradata and Cornerstone. Works as keynote speaker, conference host, awards presenter and panel moderator across UK and international business audiences. Biography Social data arrived in most boardrooms as a dashboard before it arrived as a story. Christian Howes built a career out of closing that gap. His route in was unusual: he started by modelling Twitter traffic around the Big Brother house to predict weekly evictions, which led to a weekly sofa spot on Big Brother’s Bit on the Side with Emma Willis, translating audience sentiment back to a live TV audience. That pattern, turning raw social signal into something a non-specialist can act on, became the core of his commercial work. He has gone on to appear as a data and digital contributor across BT Sport, ITV’s This Morning, BBC1’s National Lottery show, Good Morning Britain, and Channel 4’s alternative election night coverage. The broadcast craft is not decoration; it is the reason his corporate sessions land with marketing, CX and customer-service teams who have sat through too many unreadable analytics decks. His corporate roster reflects where social and behavioural data actually matters in large consumer businesses. He has worked with Sony PlayStation, Diageo, HSBC, RBS, Lloyds, Barclays, ASOS, UMG, Skoda, GoCompare, Microsoft and Teradata on what audiences are doing, what they are signalling, and how customer-service and merchandising operations should respond. In 2015 he co-founded Mr Bridger, a content business developing formats for production companies, which keeps his feet in the studio as well as the boardroom. The second half of his offer, and often the reason he is booked, is hosting. He anchors conferences, moderates panels and presents awards, and clients buy the combination: one voice that can deliver a substantive keynote on digital and data, then carry the rest of the room for the day. Key speaking topics Social media analytics and audience sentiment Big data and consumer behaviour Digital marketing and branding Customer experience and customer service transformation Conference hosting, awards presenting and panel moderation Media, broadcast and the attention economy Ideal for CMOs, brand and marketing directors in consumer-facing businesses Customer experience, customer service and digital transformation leads Conference and awards organisers needing one host across keynote and stage Retail, financial services and entertainment audiences working with large consumer datasets Audience outcomes A clearer read on what their customers are signalling on social and digital channels, with examples they recognise from their own category. A practical sense of where social and behavioural data should connect to operational decisions in marketing, CX and service. Concrete case references from consumer brands, financial services and broadcast, rather than generic digital theory. For hosted events, a single credible voice across keynote, interview and awards that keeps the room with you.

Why organisations work with Christie Watson Two decades on hospital wards, including paediatric intensive care and resuscitation roles at Great Ormond Street, St Mary’s Paddington, and Guy’s and St Thomas’, give her a direct authority on care under pressure that consultants and academics cannot replicate. The Language of Kindness reached number one in the Sunday Times list and stayed in the top ten for five months, evidence that her articulation of care work resonates well beyond a clinical audience. A Costa First Novel Award winner and a UEA professor, she translates the texture of frontline experience into language that lands with senior, sceptical audiences. She offers a serious counterweight to wellness-industry framing: a vocabulary for compassion, moral injury, and staff burnout that is grounded in lived practice, not vendor messaging. Biography highlights Author of eight books across fiction and memoir, including Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, The Language of Kindness, The Courage to Care, and Moral Injuries. Costa First Novel Award winner for Tiny Sunbirds Far Away (2011). Sunday Times number one bestseller for The Language of Kindness, with translations in 23 languages. Professor at the University of East Anglia, holding appointments associated with creative writing and medical and health humanities. Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of East Anglia. Patron of the Royal College of Nursing Foundation; contributor to The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Telegraph, and TEDx. Biography The hardest work in any organisation is usually the work that involves caring for other people, and it is also the work most likely to be reduced to a slogan. Christie Watson spent twenty years inside that reality as a nurse, in paediatric intensive care and as a resuscitation officer at Great Ormond Street, St Mary’s Paddington, and Guy’s and St Thomas’. Her writing started inside that experience and has stayed there. The Language of Kindness drew on those two decades and reached number one on the Sunday Times list, where it stayed in the top ten for five months. It has been translated into 23 languages and adapted for theatre. Her debut novel, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, won the Costa First Novel Award in 2011. Later books, including The Courage to Care and the novel Moral Injuries, continue to sit at the meeting point of medicine, ethics, and ordinary human life. She is a professor at the University of East Anglia, where she completed her own MA in creative writing and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters in 2018. She is a patron of the RCN Foundation and a contributor to The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Telegraph, and TEDx. Her standing inside nursing and outside it is unusual and gives her a hearing in rooms that rarely listen to the same voice. For senior audiences, she offers something specific. A way of talking about compassion, moral injury, and staff wellbeing that does not rely on borrowed corporate framing, and a sense of what care actually costs the people who provide it. Key speaking topics Compassion and care in high-pressure organisations Moral injury and burnout in frontline workforces Storytelling as a tool for organisational understanding Mental health and wellbeing beyond the wellness industry The lived reality of healthcare and caring professions Kindness as an institutional discipline Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers, and wellbeing leads in organisations with frontline or caring workforces Healthcare boards, NHS leadership, and clinical executive teams Conferences on workplace mental health, employee experience, and the future of work in human-intensive sectors Universities, professional bodies, and membership organisations addressing the future of caring professions Audience outcomes A more honest vocabulary for compassion, moral injury, and burnout, grounded in twenty years of frontline practice A sharper sense of why standard wellbeing programmes underperform with fatigued workforces An authentic, first-person account that senior audiences remember and quote afterwards A reframing of care as a serious institutional practice, not a soft attribute

Why organisations work with Clare Balding Three decades of unrehearsed live broadcasting – seven Olympic Games, five Paralympic Games, royal ceremonies, national events – provide a practitioner’s account of composure under pressure that few corporate speakers can match from direct professional experience. As a former Champion Lady Rider who competed at elite amateur level before entering broadcasting, she brings dual insider authority to performance psychology: participant and narrator, not observer alone. The framework she offers is drawn from experience inside elite performance, not commentary on it. Her personal navigation of a historically male industry as an openly gay woman in an era when both were unusual means her arguments on inclusion carry the weight of direct professional experience rather than secondhand advocacy. Her National Book Award-winning memoir My Animals and Other Family (Penguin, 2012) signals a narrative intelligence that distinguishes her from broadcast-only speakers – she holds credibility across literary, corporate and sporting contexts simultaneously. Corporate clients visible on her official website include BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Amazon and the Football Association – indicating an established track record well beyond the sport-and-hospitality circuit. Biography highlights MA (Cantab) in English, Newnham College, Cambridge; Honorary Fellow of Newnham (2014) Former amateur flat jockey; Champion Lady Rider (1990); lead BBC horse-racing presenter from 1998 Broadcaster across seven Olympic Games, five Paralympic Games and five Winter Olympics for BBC and Channel 4 BAFTA Special Award (2013); OBE (2013) for services to broadcasting and journalism; CBE (2022) for services to sport and charity RTS Sports Presenter of the Year (2003 and 2012); National Book Award for Biography/Autobiography of the Year for My Animals and Other Family (2012) President of the Rugby Football League (2020-2022) Biography Most professional communication is rehearsed. The moments that test leadership credibility – a live crisis statement, an all-hands that goes off-script, a board announcement under external scrutiny – are not. Clare Balding has spent three decades developing the specific discipline that bridges that gap, across seven Olympic Games, five Paralympic Games and major national ceremonies for the BBC. Her route into broadcasting began not in a media training room but on a racetrack. Between 1988 and 1993, she competed as an amateur flat jockey, winning the Champion Lady Rider title in 1990, before reading English at Newnham College, Cambridge. That background as a trained athlete who understands performance pressure from the inside gives her account of preparation and composure a direct authority that separates her from presenters who have only observed elite performance. The recognition of her contribution spans multiple domains: BAFTA Special Award for factual television, RTS Sports Presenter of the Year twice, National Book Award for My Animals and Other Family (Penguin, 2012). She was appointed OBE in 2013 for services to broadcasting and journalism, and CBE in 2022 for services to sport and charity. Newnham College, Cambridge, made her an Honorary Fellow in 2014. In corporate settings she speaks on the mental disciplines that produce performance under genuine pressure, on gender equality and inclusion drawn from direct experience in a traditionally male industry, and on career adaptability when professional identities shift. Clients including Goldman Sachs, Amazon and the Football Association engage her both as a host of major events and as a substantive contributor to leadership conversations. Key speaking topics Performance under live pressure Elite sports psychology and mental preparation Executive communication and presence Resilience and career adaptability Women in sport and gender equality Inclusion and diversity leadership Storytelling and narrative communication Ideal for Senior leadership and executive teams focused on communication, presence and performance under pressure Organisations running gender equality, women’s leadership or inclusion programmes Sports industry bodies, governing organisations and national sporting federations Corporate hospitality and client entertainment events tied to major sporting occasions Audience outcomes A practitioner’s framework for the specific preparation habits that produce composure under live, uncontrolled conditions First-hand insight into the mental disciplines used at elite sporting and broadcast level, applied directly to leadership and professional performance Practical perspective on communicating with authority across different audiences and formats A grounded understanding of what inclusion requires in practice, drawn from personal experience navigating exclusion at the highest professional level Renewed perspective on career adaptability, illustrated through Balding’s own transitions from competitive sport to journalism, television presenting and authorship

Why organisations work with Clare McDonnell She is the voice that announces the news to the UK on BBC Radio 5 Live Drive each evening, and she brings that same authority and composure to a corporate stage. She presents Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 and anchored Newsday on the BBC World Service, which means she can interview a chief executive, a campaigner, and a minister inside the same hour without losing the audience. She has covered live, unscripted moments of national consequence including the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the resignations of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, which is the kind of pressure that makes a conference room feel manageable. She moves from a five-thousand-seat venue at ExCeL London to a small charity dinner without changing register, which is what awards hosts and panel chairs are actually paid for. She is a working journalist, not a former one, which means panellists are interviewed by someone who is still asking questions of national figures every weekday. Biography highlights Daily presenter, BBC Radio 5 Live Drive. Regular presenter, BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour. Original launch presenter, BBC 6 Music, March 2002 to March 2010. Anchor, Newsday, BBC World Service; presenter on the Global News podcast. Reporter, BBC One’s The One Show; former reporter on BBC Three’s Liquid News. Sports presenting credits include the Wimbledon Championships and the UEFA Women’s European Football Championships. Biography The presenter of BBC Radio 5 Live Drive is, for several million UK listeners each weekday evening, the voice that explains the news as it happens. Clare McDonnell has held that chair through Westminster confidence votes, two Conservative leadership exits, and the moment she announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II live on national radio. She is also a regular presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, anchored Newsday on the BBC World Service, and presents on the Global News podcast, the BBC’s most-downloaded news podcast. She was one of the original launch presenters of BBC 6 Music in 2002 and reported on BBC Three’s Liquid News before moving into mainstream news and sports anchoring, including the Wimbledon Championships and the UEFA Women’s European Football Championships. For organisations, the relevant point is the craft. Hosting a conference is not the same job as presenting a radio show, but it draws on the same muscles: keeping a panel honest, hearing what was actually said, moving an audience through a long programme without losing them, and asking the question the room is thinking but cannot phrase. McDonnell does that work daily on live national radio. She has covered enough unpredictable moments to be unbothered by the small ones that derail a conference: a missing panellist, a slide deck that fails, a CEO who answers a different question. The pressure of a corporate stage is, for her, the easier version of a Tuesday at five. She is represented by Knight Ayton Management and chairs panels, hosts awards, and moderates audience Q and As from the ExCeL Arena in London to small charity events. Key speaking topics Awards hosting Panel moderation Live event hosting Audience Q and A chairing Conference and gala hosting UK and global news interviews Ideal for Awards ceremonies looking for a host with national broadcast presence. Leadership conferences needing a panel chair who can interview chief executives and policy figures. Corporate galas and customer events where the host carries the evening across multiple segments. Charity dinners and advocacy events that need a host with newsroom credibility. Audience outcomes A programme that runs to time without feeling rushed. Panels that stay on the question the audience cares about, not the answer the speaker prepared. Senior figures interviewed in a way that gets a real answer, not a press line. An audience that feels addressed by someone they recognise from national radio. A host who absorbs the unexpected without the audience noticing.