Storytelling & Business Communication

Why organisations work with Eric M. Bailey He turns cognitive neuroscience into 22 named tools managers can use the next morning, not a worldview to adopt over time. The methodology is called the Principles of Human Understanding. His client list spans Google, the US Air Force, Los Angeles County, and the Phoenix Police Department. Few communication speakers translate across that range of cultures. The Cure for Stupidity gives an organisation a shared vocabulary for irrational workplace behaviour. Once a team has read it, conflict conversations get shorter. He works the room across analytical and emotional registers. Engineering audiences and frontline service teams both come away with the same takeaways, which is rare. Biography highlights President of Bailey Strategic Innovation Group, a communication and organisational development consultancy. Bestselling author of The Cure for Stupidity: Using Brain Science to Explain Irrational Behavior at Work. Creator of the Principles of Human Understanding methodology, used in keynote, facilitation, and coaching engagements. Master’s in Leadership and Organizational Development, Saint Louis University. Client work with Google, US Air Force, Los Angeles County, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, City of Phoenix, Phoenix Police Department. Media features on CNN, Forbes, and HuffPost. Speaker on the Workhuman Live conference programme. Biography Most conflict at work is not about the issue on the table. It is about two people running different software on the same conversation. Bailey has built a career mapping that mismatch and giving leaders a way to talk about it without making anyone feel stupid. His book The Cure for Stupidity: Using Brain Science to Explain Irrational Behavior at Work sets out the argument. Irrational behaviour is usually rational once you understand what the brain is protecting against. The book seeded a methodology, the Principles of Human Understanding, which now anchors his keynote and consulting work through Bailey Strategic Innovation Group. The client list is the proof. Google, the US Air Force, Los Angeles County, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the City of Phoenix, and the Phoenix Police Department have all brought him in. These are organisations with very different tolerance for soft language, which forces the material to do real work. The Master’s from Saint Louis University in Leadership and Organizational Development is the academic underpinning. The 22 tools are what audiences actually leave with. What sets Bailey apart from other neuroscience-of-work voices is that he writes for the manager who has eleven things to do today, not for the reader who wants a theory of mind. The framework is built to be used inside a difficult conversation, not admired from a distance. Key speaking topics Brain science of workplace communication Generational dynamics and intergenerational friction Diversity, equity and inclusion under contested conditions Change management and the neuroscience of resistance Team trust and functional team design Leadership development for first-line and mid-level managers Ideal for CHROs and people leaders dealing with persistent team conflict and engagement decay Heads of L&D commissioning manager development at scale DEI leads who need a frame for inclusion that lands with sceptical audiences Public sector and uniformed leadership teams (law enforcement, military, municipal government) needing communication training that travels across rank Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for naming the cognitive patterns that drive workplace friction Specific tools, drawn from the Principles of Human Understanding, that can be used in a difficult conversation the same week A reframe of irrational behaviour as predictable, not personal, which lowers the temperature of recurring conflicts A working model for how the brain interprets change, status, and difference, applied to current team dynamics

Why organisations work with Brickman Allen A specific, verifiable survival story: under 10% predicted chance of life, discharged nine days after the attack, marathon completed against medical advice. The narrative is his own, not borrowed. Author of The Bully Guard, a memoir and practical guide aimed at teenagers, which makes him a credible booking for schools, youth-facing programmes, and family-day corporate events as well as adult audiences. Runs his own businesses alongside the speaking work: president of EMC2 Group, an Arizona architecture firm, and owner of Tradelands Realty. The day job grounds the storytelling in operating reality rather than pure platform performance. Built around the #LiveOutside method, a personal framework on living outside expectations, limits, fear, and self. It gives audiences a single mental model to take away rather than a set of unconnected anecdotes. Biography highlights Survivor of a violent home invasion; defied a less than 10% survival prognosis and a predicted six-month hospital recovery, leaving hospital in nine days. Completed a marathon in early 2021 after medical opinion that he would never run again. Author of The Bully Guard: The Story of Acceptance and Friendship, available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. President of EMC2 Group, an Arizona architecture firm, with more than 15 years leading firms and teams in the US Southwest. Founder and owner of Tradelands Realty, established 2006. Member of the National Speakers Association, Arizona chapter. Biography A home invasion in his early twenties left Brickman Allen on life support with less than a 10% chance of survival and a predicted six-month hospital recovery. He walked out nine days later. Years on, he completed a marathon that doctors had said would never happen. That sequence is the spine of his speaking work. The point is not the survival itself, but what it reveals about decisions made under sustained pressure: how a person keeps showing up at home, at work, and inside an organisation while still healing. The #LiveOutside method, his own framework, organises this into four moves: living outside expectations, outside limits, outside fear, and outside self. He pairs the platform work with a working business life. He is president of EMC2 Group, an Arizona architecture firm where he has spent more than fifteen years leading teams across the US Southwest, and owner of Tradelands Realty, which he founded in 2006. His book The Bully Guard sits alongside the keynote work as a guide for teenagers on bullying, depression, and self-acceptance, drawn directly from his own school years. For audiences, the value is a model for recovery that does not skip the harder parts. He talks openly about depression, suicidal ideation as a teenager, and the long return to function after the attack. The result is a session that lands with people carrying something heavy of their own, alongside leaders who want a vocabulary for resilience that holds up outside the slide deck. Key speaking topics Recovery and resilience after trauma Mental health awareness and suicide prevention Bullying and adolescent self-acceptance Loyalty, integrity, and trust in teams Vulnerable leadership Storytelling for purpose-driven audiences Ideal for Internal culture days, all-hands events, and family-day formats where teams want a human story rather than a strategic keynote HR and wellbeing leads commissioning sessions on mental health awareness, resilience, or suicide prevention Schools, universities, and youth programmes addressing bullying and adolescent wellbeing Sales kick-offs and team off-sites looking for a closing keynote on perseverance and integrity Audience outcomes A single named framework, the #LiveOutside method, that audiences can hold onto after the room empties A first-person account of recovery from extreme adversity that opens space to discuss mental health honestly inside the organisation Language for talking about bullying, depression, and suicidal ideation in mixed audiences without flinching from the subject A practical view of how integrity, loyalty, and self-reliance show up in daily team behaviour

Why organisations work with Anita Jones A live-broadcast presenter who hosts boardroom and large-audience corporate events with the pacing and composure of a Champions League studio. Bilingual English and Spanish presenting capability for international events, conferences and panel sessions, including interviews at the level of Lionel Messi and Jude Bellingham. A named, parliamentary-level voice on endometriosis as an Endometriosis UK ambassador, giving women’s health an editorial weight beyond a wellness slot. A British-Nigerian broadcaster credible on representation in sport and media without retreating into generic DEI framing. Biography highlights Presenter, CBS Champions League and CBS Golazo. Reporter, Premier League Productions, reporting weekly from clubs across England. Sky Sports broadcaster; earlier roles with BBC, Channel 4, and Arsenal Nation Live. First-class degree in European Studies, King’s College London; fluent in Spanish and English. Has covered the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the Women’s World Cup, and the Women’s Champions League. Ambassador for Endometriosis UK; has spoken in Parliament on endometriosis, including for Endometriosis Action Month. Biography Live football broadcasting is unforgiving. A presenter has to carry a Champions League studio, hold the line in a noisy stadium tunnel, and translate a Messi or Bellingham answer on the fly. That is the working environment behind Anita Jones’s day job at CBS Champions League, CBS Golazo, Sky Sports and Premier League Productions. The route in was journalistic rather than celebrity. A first-class degree in European Studies from King’s College London, then early reporting and presenting roles at the BBC, Channel 4 and Arsenal Nation Live, before the move into Premier League Productions and CBS. Bilingual English and Spanish broadcasting has been a consistent edge across the work, particularly around major tournaments including the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the Women’s World Cup and the Women’s Champions League. The hosting craft transfers cleanly to corporate stages. Jones works as an event host, moderator and panel chair, with the pace and authority of a live broadcast rather than the cadence of a guest speaker. Briefs that require multilingual delivery, sports tie-ins, or a presenter who can carry a high-profile interview in front of a senior internal audience all sit naturally inside her week. The second strand of her public work is women’s health. Diagnosed with endometriosis in 2018 after a laparoscopy, Jones became an ambassador for Endometriosis UK and has used her broadcast profile to put the condition on the record, including in Parliament during Endometriosis Action Month. For employers looking to treat women’s health as an operating issue rather than a wellness panel, that lived and named platform is what she adds. Key speaking topics Event hosting and live moderation Panel chairing for international and bilingual audiences Sports broadcasting and media Women in sports media Endometriosis and women’s workplace health Representation and diversity in sport Ideal for Corporate conferences and annual events looking for a host or MC with live-broadcast pacing International and bilingual English and Spanish audiences, particularly in sport, sponsorship and brand activation Employee network and ERG events on women’s health, with a focus on endometriosis Sports industry, sponsor and federation events requiring an experienced football moderator Audience outcomes A professionally paced event with clear handovers, sharp interviewing and confident audience handling. A concrete picture of how endometriosis presents in working life and what better workplace support actually looks like. A first-hand view of how representation in sports media has shifted, and what it took to move from a regional reporter role to a Champions League studio. For bilingual audiences, an event delivered with equal fluency in English and Spanish rather than translated through a second voice.

Why organisations work with Ritula Shah Fifteen years anchoring BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight gives her the editorial reflexes to keep a senior panel honest under time pressure, on the record, without losing the audience. A working seat on the RUSI Advisory Board means she walks into defence, security and geopolitics briefings already inside the conversation, not learning it from a brief. Reporting experience from Guantanamo Bay, China, India, Brazil and Jordan gives her first-hand reference points when a panel drifts into abstraction on foreign policy or human rights. She is one of a small number of UK broadcasters trusted by ministers, regulators and dissenting voices to chair a discussion that needs to be both serious and broadcast-quality. Her ambassadorial work with the British Asian Trust and trusteeship of INIVA make her a credible host for organisations who want representation handled without performance. Biography highlights Lead presenter, The World Tonight, BBC Radio 4 (15 years, to 2023). Former presenter, The Real Story (BBC World Service), Woman’s Hour, The World Today, One to One. Current weekday-evening presenter, Calm Classics, Classic FM. Advisory Board member, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Ambassador, British Asian Trust; trustee, INIVA. Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Warwick (2019). Biography The World Tonight is the BBC Radio 4 programme senior leaders, diplomats and ministers tend to listen to on the drive home. Ritula Shah presented it for fifteen years. That fact alone places her in a small group of UK broadcasters who have spent a working career interrogating finance ministers, foreign secretaries, sanctioned oligarchs, generals and dissidents on the record, in real time, with no second take. The geographical footprint matters here. She has reported from Guantanamo Bay, China, India, Brazil, Jordan, Finland and Germany, and covered the Soviet collapse, 9/11 from New York, multiple US and UK elections and the slow grind of Brexit. When a panel on supply chains, sanctions or political risk drifts into theory, she pulls it back to a place she has actually been. The think-tank work is not decorative. Shah sits on the Advisory Board of RUSI, the world’s oldest defence and security institute, which means she chairs geopolitics and security sessions already inside the institutional conversation rather than reading in. She is also an ambassador for the British Asian Trust, a trustee of INIVA, and an honorary Doctor of Letters of the University of Warwick. For organisations, the practical offer is rarer than a keynote. She is a broadcaster who can take a sensitive board conversation, a regulator panel, a closed-room briefing on China exposure or a high-profile awards ceremony, and run it at the standard of a Radio 4 broadcast. The room hears something true, the recording is usable, and the senior speakers do not feel ambushed. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and the multipolar world International affairs and foreign policy Defence and national security News literacy and trust in media Inclusion, identity and belonging in public life Conference, panel and awards moderation Board-level event chairing Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning a geopolitical, sanctions or China-exposure session Defence, security, foreign policy and policy-research convenings Awards ceremonies and flagship annual conferences requiring a broadcast-grade host Regulators, professional bodies and universities running on-the-record panels with public figures Audience outcomes A clearer mental map of where the multipolar world is actually moving, beyond headline framing Better-quality contributions from senior panellists, because the questions are sharper and the chairing is firmer A working sense of how to read news critically in an environment of declining trust and rising misinformation Confidence that a difficult conversation, on geopolitics, identity or institutional reform, can be held in public without becoming theatre

Why organisations work with Andrew Brodsky He gives leadership teams a named, research-backed framework, PING (Perspective-taking, Initiative, Non-verbal cues, Goals), that turns ad hoc virtual habits into a deliberate operating practice. His evidence is original, not aggregated: peer-reviewed studies in the Journal of Applied Psychology and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin on how channel choice changes what gets said, heard and believed. He answers a question most consultants avoid: when is audio better than video, when does email outperform a meeting, and what does that mean for managers who default to whatever is easiest. His client roster includes Dell Technologies, PwC, Amazon and Novo Nordisk, which means the work has been pressure-tested inside organisations running global hybrid operations. The book Ping, published by Simon & Schuster and Penguin, has been endorsed by Adam Grant and Katy Milkman, placing his work alongside the leading voices in applied behavioural science. Biography highlights Management professor, McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin PhD in Organizational Behavior, Harvard Business School; BS, The Wharton School Author, Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication (Simon & Schuster, Penguin, 2025) CEO and founder, Ping Group Named one of the world’s Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors by Poets&Quants Research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin; commentary in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, CNBC, The New York Times and TIME Biography Hybrid work settled the location question and left a harder one open. Inside most companies, the decision about which channel to use for which conversation is still made by habit. The cost is measurable: slower decisions, weaker trust, meetings that exist to compensate for messages that should never have been sent. Brodsky has built a research programme around that gap. His peer-reviewed work in the Journal of Applied Psychology and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin examines the operating consequences of specific channel choices, from how email shapes emotional authenticity to why audio-only calls often outperform video. The findings are precise enough to act on, which is unusual in a field crowded with generalities about remote work. The book Ping, published by Simon & Schuster and Penguin in 2025, consolidates that research into a four-part framework used inside teams at Dell Technologies, PwC, Amazon and Novo Nordisk. Adam Grant and Katy Milkman have endorsed the work, and HBR IdeaCast featured the argument as a guide for leaders auditing their own virtual practices. His credibility rests on a clear point: virtual communication is now an executive skill, not a logistics question. Boards and senior teams that treat it as the latter pay the cost in performance. Key speaking topics Virtual and hybrid communication strategy Channel choice and operating performance Leadership in distributed teams Trust and authenticity in digital workplaces Conflict reduction across asynchronous communication AI in workplace communication Inclusion in remote and hybrid settings Ideal for CHROs and heads of people redesigning hybrid operating models Executive teams auditing the performance cost of their meeting and communication habits Transformation and digital workplace leads setting team-level communication norms Senior leadership offsites focused on trust, decision speed and team effectiveness Audience outcomes A working framework for matching communication channel to task, with named criteria Specific research findings on when email, audio, video and instant message each outperform the alternatives A clear view of how leadership behaviour in virtual channels shapes trust and response patterns across teams Practical guidance on reducing conflict and misinterpretation in asynchronous communication A defensible position on AI-assisted interpersonal communication and the trust consequences of getting it wrong

Why organisations work with Matt Barbet A current Sky News anchor who can chair a CEO panel, run a town hall or moderate a board offsite at the standard of a national broadcast interview. Inside view from Freuds, where he advised executives and global figures on storytelling and on managing crises in real time, not in theory. Two decades of frontline reporting across BBC, ITV and Channel 5, including coverage of elections, conflict and natural disasters, which gives him a credible voice on how reputations break and recover. A second keynote on artificial intelligence that focuses on human judgement and authentic communication as the variables that matter when AI takes over routine output. Biography highlights Sky News anchor, hosting the Sunday 10am to 2pm programme since February 2024. Partner at Freuds, the London public relations firm, since 2018. Former anchor of Channel 5’s 5 News flagship 17:00 programme and co-presenter of ITV Breakfast’s Daybreak. Reporting career across BBC News, BBC Radio 1, ITV News and Channel 5 spanning more than twenty years. Covered major international stories including the 2010 Haiti earthquake and embedded reporting in Afghanistan. Cardiff University and Cardiff School of Journalism graduate. Biography A reputational crisis used to be a press office problem. It is now a board problem, with a clock measured in hours and an audience that includes regulators, investors, customers and staff watching the same feed at the same time. The leaders who navigate this well tend to share one quality, the ability to think clearly and communicate plainly while the noise is at its loudest. This is the territory Matt Barbet has worked in from both sides. As a Sky News anchor, and previously across BBC News, ITV and Channel 5, he has spent more than twenty years interviewing senior figures during the moments that define their organisations. As a partner at Freuds since 2018, he has sat on the other side of the table, advising executives and high-profile clients on how to prepare for those moments and how to recover from them. The dual vantage point is what makes him useful to a serious audience. He can describe what a newsroom sees during a developing story, what makes a spokesperson credible on camera, and where leaders most commonly lose control of a narrative. The reporting gives him the field examples. The Freuds work gives him the language of strategy and reputational risk. For most clients the commercial product is hosting. Barbet chairs conferences, moderates panels of senior executives and runs awards ceremonies and town halls at broadcast standard. The keynote material on crisis communications and on artificial intelligence sits alongside that work, anchored in the same craft of listening carefully and speaking clearly under pressure. Key speaking topics Crisis communications and reputational risk Leadership communication under media scrutiny Storytelling for senior executives Artificial intelligence and the human side of communication Conference hosting and panel moderation Frontline journalism and how news is made Ideal for CEOs, CCOs and communications directors preparing for reputational incidents Senior leadership teams running town halls, conferences or investor events that need broadcast-quality hosting Boards and executive committees commissioning a moderator for high-stakes panel sessions Awards ceremonies and flagship industry conferences Audience outcomes A clearer view of how a newsroom processes a developing story, and what that means for the speed of a corporate response. Specific examples of how senior figures hold or lose credibility on camera. A practical sense of how communications, legal and operational decisions interact during a live crisis. A point of view on where AI raises the value of direct human communication rather than reducing it.

Why organisations work with Taryn Southern She produced the first solo-artist pop album composed with AI in 2018, when most organisations were still asking whether generative tools could ship anything usable. The lessons on creative workflow integration are now several years ahead of most enterprise practice. She runs storytelling and external communications at Blackrock Neurotech, an implantable BCI company, which gives her a working view of the next technology layer beyond generative AI. Her documentary work, including «I AM HUMAN» at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, gives her a rare ability to translate frontier neurotechnology into language a non-technical board can use. She has keynoted SXSW, Web Summit, the World AI Summit, and NY Times Future of Work, and has been booked by Google, Salesforce, Deloitte, and Gartner. Senior tech audiences treat her as a peer, not a populariser. Biography highlights Chief Storytelling Officer at Blackrock Neurotech since 2021, leading story strategy for funding rounds totalling over $230M led by Thiel Capital, Apeiron, and Tether Released «I AM AI» in 2018, the first solo-artist pop album composed and produced with AI tools including Amper, IBM Watson Beat, Google Magenta, and AIVA Directed and produced «I AM HUMAN,» premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival; subsequent awards include Best Director at Oslo Film Fest Three-time Streamy Awards nominee; 2018 Geena Davis Award recipient for innovative female filmmaking Keynote speaker at SXSW, Web Summit, World AI Summit, Google’s AI Summit, VidCon, The Next Web, NY Times Future of Work Featured in Vanity Fair, Billboard, Fast Company, Wired, Forbes, Psychology Today, and Harvard Business Review Biography The first solo-artist pop album composed with AI was released in September 2018, before most enterprises had finished their first ChatGPT briefing note. «I AM AI» used Amper, IBM Watson Beat, Google Magenta, and AIVA, with the lead single «Break Free» reaching the Top 100 radio charts. The interest, for a serious audience, is not the novelty. It is what the project showed about how a working creative integrates these tools into a production workflow that ships. That production credibility is the spine of the work Taryn Southern now does with senior teams. She has produced more than 1,500 videos across more than a decade of digital media, advised early product teams at YouTube, Google VR, and Snapchat, and directed an award-winning Google VR series. The vantage point is unusual: she has built original commercial product with generative tools at every stage of their maturity. Since 2021 she has been Chief Storytelling Officer at Blackrock Neurotech, the implantable brain-computer interface company. She launched what the company describes as the world’s first BCI museum, oversaw a corporate rebrand and the formation of a BCI Ethics Advisory board, and led communications strategy for funding rounds totalling over $230M, with investors including Thiel Capital, Apeiron, and Tether. The role gives her a working view of the technology layer that arrives after generative AI, and the regulatory and ethical questions a board will be asked to take a position on within the next decade. Her directorial debut, «I AM HUMAN,» premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and followed three of the first patients to receive implantable brain-computer interfaces. The film is the practical bridge in her work with corporate audiences: it shows what the next frontier of human-machine technology looks like in a hospital, in a home, and in the conversations a serious organisation will need to have about it well before the technology becomes commonplace. Key speaking topics Generative AI in creative production AI-augmented workflows and creative practice Brain-computer interfaces and human-machine integration Frontier neurotechnology and ethics Storytelling for emerging technology companies The future of human and artificial intelligence Ideal for Boards and leadership teams setting AI strategy beyond initial pilots Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Communications Officers, and creative leadership integrating generative tools into production Innovation, R&D, and strategy leaders tracking neurotech and the post-AI technology stack Senior leadership conferences in technology, media, healthcare, and life sciences Audience outcomes A working understanding of how generative AI tools function inside a real production workflow, drawn from a practitioner who has shipped commercial product A grounded view of brain-computer interface technology, what it currently does, where it is going, and the questions boards will face A sharper sense of which categories of creative and knowledge work are most exposed to generative AI, and which remain durably human An informed perspective on the ethical and governance terrain emerging at the intersection of AI and neurotechnology

Why organisations work with Joel Zeff He pulls people out of their seats and into the room. Improv games run live with audience volunteers, not slides about engagement, are the mechanism the audience remembers a week later. He has done this more than 2,500 times since 1997, for buyers including Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS. The format is tested at scale. His book Make the Right Choice (Wiley, 2nd edition) gives leaders a written reference for the principles, so the keynote leaves a tangible artefact for managers to apply. He writes and performs his own material. The journalism background, including a recruited move to the Dallas Times Herald and freelance work for Newsday, shows up in tight scripting and audience-aware writing. For internal sales kickoffs, leadership offsites, and culture moments where the room needs to be activated rather than briefed, Zeff is one of the few keynote speakers whose primary craft is the performance itself. Biography highlights Author of Make the Right Choice: Lead with Passion, Elevate Your Team, and Unleash the Fun at Work, second edition published by Wiley More than 2,500 keynote events for corporate and association audiences since 1997 Former newspaper journalist; recruited to the Dallas Times Herald in 1991, with freelance bylines for Newsday and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Former account executive at Edelman Public Relations Appeared on CNBC’s The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch Named clients include Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS Biography Engagement is the corporate problem that has resisted three decades of solutions. Surveys, town halls, pulse tools, and culture decks all describe it well. Almost none of them change the temperature in the room. Joel Zeff’s keynotes start from a different premise. If the room feels alive, the conversation about engagement starts to mean something. If it does not, no framework will fix that. Zeff trained as a newspaper journalist before he was a speaker. He started at the Saginaw News covering crime and accidents, was recruited to the Dallas Times Herald in 1991, and freelanced for Newsday and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after the Herald closed. He then worked as an account executive at Edelman Public Relations and founded his own consulting practice in 1994. The improv comedy he was doing on weekends turned into his career when Texas Instruments asked him to bring the act to an executive retreat. The format he has built over 2,500 events since 1997 is unusual in a corporate setting. Audience members come on stage, play improvisation games, and produce, in real time, the behaviours the keynote is describing: listening, building on each other’s ideas, taking initiative, recovering from mistakes in front of a crowd. Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS have all booked the act. His book Make the Right Choice, now in its second edition with Wiley, sets out the principles in writing for leaders who want a reference after the room has gone home. What organisations actually buy from Zeff is a live demonstration that the soft skills they keep training for are produced under pressure, not in workshops. The improv stage is a faster way to see them than any management exercise. Key speaking topics Employee engagement Workplace culture Team collaboration and communication Change and adaptability at work Creativity and innovation in everyday work Leadership and motivation Workplace humour and human connection Ideal for Sales kickoffs and annual conferences where the opening or closing keynote needs to lift the room, not brief it Leadership offsites focused on team behaviour, communication, and collaboration Culture, engagement, and HR-led events where managers leave needing something they can act on with their teams Association conferences and customer events that combine substance with a live, interactive set piece Audience outcomes A shared, recent experience of what genuine collaboration looks like, generated live in the room rather than described in slides Specific language and prompts from improv (listening, “yes and”, supporting the person on stage with you) that managers can carry back into team meetings A reset on the role of humour, energy, and play in serious work, with named examples from organisations the audience recognises A written reference, via Make the Right Choice, for leaders who want to extend the keynote ideas into team practice

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 Elizabeth Day A single, named thesis built over hundreds of long-form interviews on How to Fail, applied to the specific cultural problem of how teams talk about setbacks. Journalistic credibility from a decade at The Observer and a Young Journalist of the Year award, which gives her the interviewing range to draw substance out of senior internal speakers and panel guests. Literary authority confirmed by a Royal Society of Literature fellowship and a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller, which lifts her above the standard wellbeing-speaker field. A direct corporate track record with Google, Facebook, HSBC, JP Morgan, Netflix and Barclays, so the material has been tested on senior commercial audiences. Equally strong as keynote, fireside interviewer, or awards host, which makes her useful for events that need one trusted voice across multiple formats. Biography highlights Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, elected 2024. Host and creator of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, with guests including Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Kate Winslet, Malcolm Gladwell and Gloria Steinem. Winner, Rising Star Award, British Podcast Awards 2019. Winner, Young Journalist of the Year, British Press Awards 2004; Highly Commended Feature Writer, 2012. Author of How to Fail, Failosophy, Friendaholic and Magpie, with Friendaholic entering the Sunday Times charts at No. 1. Host of BBC Radio 4’s Open Book since 2021; co-host of Sky Arts Book Club Live. Biography Most workplaces still treat failure as an event to be hidden. Elizabeth Day has spent years arguing, in print and on air, that the more useful question is what setbacks teach the people who admit to them. How to Fail, the podcast she launched in 2018, has built that argument into one of the most listened-to interview shows in the UK. Her credibility for the topic is not motivational. It is journalistic. She trained on the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary, moved to The Sunday Telegraph as a news reporter, and won Young Journalist of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. From 2007 to 2016 she was a feature writer at The Observer, picking up a commendation in the Feature Writer category at the 2012 Press Awards. The literary record sits alongside the broadcasting one. Her novel Scissors Paper Stone won the Betty Trask Award; The Party became a Richard and Judy Book Club pick; Friendaholic entered the Sunday Times charts at No. 1. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024 and hosts BBC Radio 4’s Open Book. For corporate audiences, the value is the translation. Google, Facebook, HSBC, JP Morgan, Netflix and Barclays have booked her to put failure, friendship and candour onto the table as workplace concerns rather than personal anecdotes. The interviews have produced a working vocabulary that senior teams can actually use when something goes wrong. Key speaking topics Failure as a method for learning and recovery Workplace candour and psychological safety Storytelling and interview craft for senior leaders Friendship, connection and the social fabric of teams Vulnerability as a professional capability Resilience after setback Women, work and visibility Ideal for CHROs and people leaders rebuilding engagement and trust after restructure or underperformance. Communications and internal events teams looking for a host who can interview senior leaders on the record without flattening them. Leadership development programmes for high-potential cohorts working on candour, feedback and self-awareness. Awards evenings and flagship conferences that need one credible voice across keynote, panel and host roles. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for naming and discussing setbacks at work without defensiveness. Specific, repeatable interview and conversation techniques drawn from years of long-form journalism. A clearer view of how candour and vulnerability function as team capabilities, not personality traits. Permission, modelled from named public figures, to treat early-career mistakes as data rather than damage.

Why organisations work with Kailash Satyarthi He is the only living Nobel Peace Laureate whose work targets the exact intersection of supply chain, child labour, and corporate accountability that ESG committees now have to defend. He built GoodWeave, the first voluntary certification system that traced child labour out of the South Asian carpet industry, giving him operational experience of what works and what fails when companies try to clean a supplier base. His 1998 Global March seeded ILO Convention 182, the most ratified convention in the organisation’s history, which means he can speak to the policy frame that regulators and procurement teams now have to align with. Bachpan Bachao Andolan, the movement he founded in 1980, has freed more than 130,000 children in India, giving his arguments the weight of measurable on-the-ground results rather than advocacy alone. He raises the moral altitude of a leadership conversation in a way few speakers can, which is why boards bring him in when they want a corporate purpose programme to feel earned rather than performative. Biography highlights 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded jointly with Malala Yousafzai for the struggle against the suppression of children and the right of every child to education. Founder of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (1980), credited with freeing more than 130,000 children in India from bonded labour, child labour, and trafficking. Founder of GoodWeave International (1994), the first independent certification system for child-labour-free carpets in South Asia. Architect of the 1998 Global March Against Child Labour across 103 countries, whose demands directly shaped ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocate; recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award (1995) and the Defenders of Democracy Award (2009). Author of Every Child Matters and Will for Children (Prabhat Prakashan); co-author with the Dalai Lama of The Book of Compassion. Biography In 1980, an electrical engineer in India walked away from his profession to free children locked inside brick kilns, carpet looms, and quarries. The organisation he founded that year, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, has since liberated more than 130,000 children from bonded labour, child labour, and trafficking. Kailash Satyarthi has spent forty-five years turning that work into a system. The system has three layers that matter to corporate audiences. The first is rescue and rehabilitation, run through a network of activists and shelters in India. The second is certification: in 1994 he founded GoodWeave, which built the first credible voluntary label proving that a carpet was made without child labour, an early prototype for the supply chain audit regimes that are now standard in apparel, cocoa, and electronics. The third is policy. The Global March he led in 1998 covered 103 countries and 80,000 kilometres, and its demands fed directly into ILO Convention 182, now the most ratified convention in ILO history. The 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Malala Yousafzai, gave his argument a global platform. He uses it to press a single point at boards and policy bodies: child labour is not a problem of poor countries, it is a problem of global procurement, and any company with a multi-tier supplier base owns part of it. That framing is uncomfortable for executives who treat human rights as a CSR line item, which is exactly why it lands. His books, Every Child Matters and Will for Children with Prabhat Prakashan, and The Book of Compassion co-authored with the Dalai Lama, sit alongside his role as a UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocate. The through-line is consistent: moral authority backed by operational evidence, applied to the supply chains and policy systems that decide whether a child works or goes to school. Key speaking topics Child labour in global supply chains Ethical sourcing and supplier certification Human rights and corporate accountability Education as an economic and rights agenda ESG, purpose, and moral leadership Civil society movements and policy change Ideal for Boards and ESG committees defining human-rights and supply-chain commitments Chief procurement officers and CSR leaders auditing supplier networks Investor groups and policy bodies setting standards on labour and human rights Purpose, values, and culture programmes for global organisations Audience outcomes A clearer view of where child labour actually lives inside multi-tier supplier networks, and what credible mitigation looks like. A working understanding of the certification, audit, and policy levers that have moved the needle, and where they have not. A direct account of how ILO Convention 182 came to exist, and what it now requires of buyers and regulators. The moral and strategic case for treating human rights as a board-level commitment rather than a reporting category.

Why organisations work with Daisy Buchanan A working novelist and journalist who teaches creative practice as a wellbeing discipline, not a soft skill. Her DK title Read Yourself Happy makes the case that reading is anxiety management with evidence, not a metaphor. Founder of the Creative Confidence Clinic and a tutor for Arvon, the UK creative writing charity. Her sessions on imposter syndrome and creative risk are built on a teaching practice, not a single keynote. Host of the literature podcast You’re Booked, with hundreds of long-form author interviews. She brings a tested craft of asking good questions, which transfers directly into panel hosting, internal town halls and leadership Q and A formats. Catalogue of four Sphere novels and three non-fiction books across DK, Headline and Hachette. The credibility is in the working output, not the speaker reel. Broadcast fluency across Woman’s Hour, the Today programme, This Morning and Good Morning Britain. Audiences get a speaker who can hold a room, an interviewee and a live moment with the same control. Biography highlights Author of four novels published by Sphere (Little, Brown): Insatiable, Careering, Limelight and Pity Party. Insatiable was longlisted for the CWIP prize. Author of three non-fiction books: How To Be A Grown Up, The Sisterhood, and Read Yourself Happy (DK, 2025), on reading as a tool for anxiety. Host of the You’re Booked podcast, interviewing authors on their reading lives. Founder of the Creative Confidence Clinic, a writing community on Substack, and creator of the Write Like A Reader course. Tutor for the Arvon Foundation. Journalism in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, Grazia (former “Dear Daisy” agony aunt), Marie Claire and The Pool. Broadcast credits include Woman’s Hour, Today, A Good Read, This Morning and Good Morning Britain. Guest-presented Booker Prize coverage for BBC News. Biography Wellbeing programmes have multiplied inside organisations over the past decade, and so has the language of psychological safety. Yet many leaders still find their teams cautious, distracted and reluctant to bring a half-formed idea into the room. The missing piece is often the daily practice of imagination, attention and honest conversation, which used to happen on the page and in long forms of reading. Buchanan’s books take this on directly. Read Yourself Happy, published by DK in 2025, argues that the right book habit is a clinically meaningful intervention in anxiety. Her novels with Sphere, including Insatiable, Careering (adapted by BBC Radio 4) and Limelight, examine ambition, money and self-worth in working women’s lives. Her non-fiction includes The Sisterhood and How To Be A Grown Up, both written for readers navigating early career and adult identity. The teaching grew out of the writing. She founded the Creative Confidence Clinic on Substack, tutors for the Arvon Foundation and hosts You’re Booked, a long-running literature podcast in which she conducts the kind of careful, generous author interview that is now uncommon in mainstream culture. The discipline of asking good questions and listening to the answer sits underneath her workplace sessions on imposter syndrome, creative risk and reading for wellbeing. For organisations, the value is in the combination of a working journalist’s discipline, a novelist’s specificity about emotional life, and a broadcaster’s room presence. Audiences leave able to name what they were anxious about, with a small number of usable habits for attention and creative risk. Her broadcast work, from the Today programme to guest-presenting Booker Prize coverage for BBC News, also makes her a credible host for internal events where the speaker needs to land a difficult conversation, not deliver a slide deck. Key speaking topics Reading and book habits as a tool for anxiety and mental health Creative confidence and imposter syndrome at work Asking better questions in leadership and team conversations Storytelling and narrative craft for business communication Women, ambition and the working life Event hosting, panel moderation and author-in-conversation formats Ideal for People, culture and wellbeing leaders looking for a wellbeing voice that is literary and specific rather than clinical or generic Internal communications and L&D teams running sessions on creative confidence, imposter syndrome or storytelling Conference organisers needing a credible host or moderator for an author-in-conversation or fireside format Women’s networks, ERGs and book clubs inside organisations Audience outcomes A working definition of creative confidence that they can practise without leaving their job A small set of reading and attention habits with a defensible link to anxiety reduction Sharper questions to take into one-to-ones, town halls and difficult team conversations Permission to take creative risk in writing, presenting and contributing in meetings A more honest sense of the gap between performed confidence and the real thing