Talent Retention Strategies

Why organisations work with Maja Jovanovic She has built an entire body of work around one specific, observable behaviour, the unnecessary workplace apology, which gives her sessions a level of practical specificity that most “women’s confidence” programming lacks. Her TEDxTrinityBellwoodsWomen talk and the follow-on TED Ideas article gave her a clearly identifiable thesis that travels beyond the room, useful for internal communications and post-event reinforcement. She works from a sociological lens rather than a self-help one, framing communication patterns as products of culture and structure, which lands well with audiences sceptical of motivational content. She has been engaged across regulated and conservative environments, including programming associated with TD Bank, RBC Financial Group and Harvard Business School, and consulted on Midol’s “No Apologies. Period.” campaign. She delivers in keynote, half-day workshop and online-course formats, viable for both flagship women’s leadership events and ongoing manager-level capability work. Biography highlights PhD in Sociology, with research focus on the sociology of women’s health. Contract and sessional faculty, Department of Sociology, McMaster University. Author of Hey Ladies, Stop Apologizing… and Other Career Mistakes Women Make (Rock’s Mills Press), with a published workbook and audiobook edition. TEDxTrinityBellwoodsWomen speaker, “How apologies kill our confidence”. Contributor to TED Ideas on workplace apology language and confidence. Consultant on Midol’s “No Apologies. Period.” campaign; broadcast appearances on Global News, CHCH and CTV’s The Social. Biography The unnecessary apology is one of the most reliable predictors of how a woman will be perceived in a meeting. Maja Jovanovic has spent over a decade studying it. As a sociologist trained at the doctoral level in the sociology of women’s health, she treats workplace communication as a social phenomenon, not a personality trait, which is what gives her work its bite. Her book, Hey Ladies, Stop Apologizing… and Other Career Mistakes Women Make, names a category of behaviour that most leadership programmes gesture at but rarely isolate. The argument is straightforward. Women in professional settings apologise reflexively in moments that do not call for it, and each instance erodes credibility with the stakeholders who decide who gets sponsored. The book has appeared in multiple editions through Rock’s Mills Press, alongside a workbook and audiobook. The thesis travelled further through her TEDxTrinityBellwoodsWomen talk, “How apologies kill our confidence”, and a TED Ideas feature that her own site identifies as the platform’s most-read piece of 2019. That visibility has translated into corporate workshops with audiences at TD Bank, RBC Financial Group and Harvard Business School programming, plus consulting work on Midol’s “No Apologies. Period.” campaign. What sets her apart in the women’s leadership speaker pool is her refusal to generalise. She does not talk about confidence as an attitude. She talks about confidence as a set of identifiable speech acts, written and spoken, that can be observed, measured and changed inside a quarter, the form of intervention that operations-minded HR and DEI functions can actually use. Key speaking topics Workplace communication and gendered language patterns Confidence as a learnable behaviour Apology language and professional credibility Imposter syndrome and structural bias Allyship and male sponsorship in mixed teams Perfectionism and people-pleasing at work Women’s leadership and career progression Ideal for CHRO, Chief Diversity Officer and DEI leads designing women’s progression programmes Heads of Talent and Learning building manager and high-potential curricula Employee resource group and women’s network leads booking flagship events Financial services, professional services and regulated-industry firms running women’s leadership tracks Audience outcomes A sharper, sociologically grounded vocabulary for naming the communication patterns that limit progression. Specific edits to spoken and written language that audiences can apply the next working day. A reframe of confidence as observable behaviour rather than personal trait, coachable at scale. A clearer view of where individual habit ends and organisational culture begins, useful for managers and sponsors.

Why organisations work with Eleanor Mills She has built the most detailed evidence base in the UK on ABC1 women aged 45 to 60, including partnership research with HSBC on midlife female entrepreneurs and with Accenture on the economic power of women over 45. She names a category most boardrooms still treat as a footnote, the “Queenager”, and gives employers and brands a working vocabulary for talent retention, marketing strategy and product design aimed at this group. She has 22 years of editorial authority at The Sunday Times, including running the magazine when it won Supplement of the Year at the 2018 Press Awards, which gives her communications work with senior leaders genuine craft behind it. Her book, Much More to Come (HarperCollins, 2024), turns midlife transition into a leadership story about reinvention after redundancy, divorce and caring responsibilities, the same pressures organisations are failing to design around. She convenes a 50,000-strong community at Noon, which means her insight is continually refreshed by the audience itself, not drawn from a one-off study. Biography highlights Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Noon (noon.org.uk), launched 8 March 2021. Former Editorial Director of The Sunday Times and Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine, 1998 to 2020. Chair of Women in Journalism, 2013 to 2021. Author of Much More to Come (HarperCollins, 2024), a Sunday Times bestseller; co-editor of Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs (2005). Recipient of the International Alliance for Women World of Difference Award (2012); editor of the Press Awards Supplement of the Year (2018). Research partnerships with HSBC (Fearless and Thriving) and Accenture (The Rise of the Queenager). Biography The most economically active female demographic in Britain is also the one most likely to leave senior roles before reaching the top. Women aged 45 to 60 hold disposable income, household decision-making power and decades of operating experience, yet employers and consumer brands consistently underestimate both their commercial weight and their willingness to stay. This is the gap Eleanor Mills has spent the last five years documenting. After 22 years at Times Newspapers, including running The Sunday Times Magazine when it won Supplement of the Year at the 2018 Press Awards, she left in March 2020 and founded Noon on International Women’s Day 2021. Noon is now a 50,000-strong community and a research platform, with partnership studies for HSBC on midlife female entrepreneurs and Accenture on the economic power of women over 45. Her book Much More to Come (HarperCollins, 2024) extends that argument into the territory of reinvention. It draws on her own redundancy and the pressures her readers describe: menopause, divorce, empty nests, caring for elderly parents, second careers. The book reframes midlife as a productive stage organisations should design around, not write off. For a senior buyer, the value is precise. She gives a board the vocabulary, the data and the editorial sharpness to act on a workforce and consumer segment most strategy decks treat as a rounding error. Key speaking topics Women in midlife as a talent and consumer category Retention of senior women through menopause and caring years Reinvention after redundancy and career disruption Marketing and brand strategy for women over 45 Personal storytelling in leadership communication Resilience in transition Ideal for CHROs and talent leaders designing retention strategies for senior women CMOs and brand leaders targeting the over-45 female consumer Boards reviewing DEI and culture beyond entry and mid-career pipelines Leadership programmes for women navigating career and life transitions in their forties and fifties Audience outcomes A working definition of the Queenager category and what makes it commercially distinct Specific intervention points where organisations lose senior women, and what changes the curve Evidence drawn from named partnership research with HSBC and Accenture, not generic DEI argument A reframing of midlife transition as a leadership and reinvention story rather than a wellness theme

Why organisations work with Ruth Gotian Her research base is unusual in the leadership field: in-person interviews with named peak performers including Anthony Fauci, Nobel laureate Mike Brown, former NASA Chief Astronaut Peggy Whitson, and Steve Kerr, not aggregated case studies pulled from secondary sources. Thinkers50 named her the #1 emerging management thinker in the world in 2021, placed her on the Coaches50 list in 2024, and shortlisted her in 2025 for the Coaching and Mentoring Award, one of eight thought leaders globally. Few executive development voices hold all three. For 29 years inside Weill Cornell Medicine, most recently as Chief Learning Officer, she built and ran the mentoring infrastructure her frameworks describe. The work is operational, not theoretical. Her four-attribute model from The Success Factor (intrinsic motivation, perseverance, strong foundation, constant informal learning) gives leadership teams a shared, testable language for what they are actually selecting and promoting for. Her mentoring work is structural, including how to recognise toxic mentorship and where to find mentors outside the obvious channels, which is what large organisations actually struggle with when formal programmes stall. Biography highlights Faculty member at Teachers College, Columbia University, teaching graduate-level courses on high achievement based on her research. Previously Chief Learning Officer and Associate Professor of Education in Anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, over a 29-year career. Author of The Success Factor (Kogan Page, 2022), co-author of The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring with Andy Lopata (Pearson/FT, 2024), and co-author of Mentoring in Healthcare with Vineet Chopra and Sanjay Saint (2025). Thinkers50 Radar Award, 2021 (#1 emerging management thinker); Coaches50, 2024; shortlisted for the Coaching and Mentoring Award, 2025 (top eight globally). Cited as a leadership expert by The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and NBC News; named a top mentor by Nature, The Wall Street Journal, and Columbia University. Contributing author at Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Psychology Today, and Fast Company; LinkedIn Top Voice in Mentoring, 2023. Semi-finalist for the Forbes 50 Over 50 list. Biography The four attributes that distinguish Nobel laureates, astronauts, Olympic champions, and world-class CEOs are not the ones senior leaders typically optimise for. Intrinsic motivation, perseverance, a strong foundation, and constant informal learning, all running at once. That is the central finding behind The Success Factor, the book that put Ruth Gotian on the Thinkers50 Radar in 2021 as the world’s #1 emerging management thinker. The research is what gives the work its weight. The book is built on direct interviews with named figures, including Anthony Fauci, Nobel laureate Mike Brown, former NASA Chief Astronaut Peggy Whitson, Build-A-Bear founder Maxine Clark, and Steve Kerr. The conclusions are not extrapolated from secondary case studies, which is the standard pattern in the success and performance category. For 29 years inside Weill Cornell Medicine, most recently as Chief Learning Officer and Associate Professor of Education in Anesthesiology, she built and ran the institution’s mentoring infrastructure. That operational base is what separates her advice on building mentoring capability from the lighter material in the field. The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, co-authored with Andy Lopata, is the practical companion volume; Mentoring in Healthcare, co-authored with Vineet Chopra and Sanjay Saint, extends the work into the sector that taught her the discipline. She now sits on the faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she earned her doctorate in adult learning and leadership, teaching graduate-level courses on high achievement built on the same research. She writes regularly for Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Psychology Today, and Fast Company, and was named a LinkedIn Top Voice in Mentoring in 2023. Nature, The Wall Street Journal, and Columbia University have each named her among the top mentors in the world; The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and NBC News have called on her as a leadership expert. The 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award shortlist placed her among eight thought leaders globally on the discipline she has spent her career inside. Key speaking topics High performance and the science of extreme success Mentorship as a leadership discipline Executive coaching and senior talent development Authentic professional networks Leadership behaviours of Nobel laureates, astronauts, and Olympic champions Retention of high performers Organisational learning and chief learning officer practice Ideal for CHROs and Chief Learning Officers building leadership and mentoring capability Boards and executive committees thinking through succession and senior talent retention Partner-track and director-level cohorts inside professional services and healthcare Women’s leadership and executive development programmes inside large enterprises Audience outcomes A defined model for what high performance actually consists of, usable inside promotion and selection conversations A practical method for spotting and avoiding toxic mentorship inside formal programmes Concrete language for how senior leaders can develop people, not just deliver results A clearer view of how peak performers maintain momentum after early success Specific examples drawn from named Nobel laureates, astronauts, and CEOs that audiences can cite the next day

Why organisations work with Gorick Ng He turns two recurring HR problems, the disengagement of capable early-career hires and the quiet stagnation of mid-career professionals in pyramid-structured firms, into a single teachable framework drawn from 500-plus structured interviews and used by Harvard Business School with every MBA cohort. His work bridges three conversations that most organisations run separately: new-hire onboarding, frontline manager development, and DEI for first-generation and underrepresented professionals. One body of content, three internal audiences. The Unspoken Rules sits on the Thinkers50 Best New Management Books list for 2022 and is published by Harvard Business Review Press, which gives the content institutional credibility that motivational early-career speakers cannot match. He speaks the language of large professional-services and corporate buyers because he has been on the buy-side of it: Boston Consulting Group, Credit Suisse, and Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work research project. Sessions are designed as practical training, not inspiration. Manager toolkits, ERG curricula, and onboarding modules can be built directly off the talk. Biography highlights Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right (Harvard Business Review Press). Named to Thinkers50’s 30 Thinkers to Watch in 2022; book selected for Thinkers50’s Best New Management Books of 2022. Career adviser at Harvard College and faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley. Former management consultant at Boston Consulting Group and investment banker at Credit Suisse. Researcher with the Managing the Future of Work project at Harvard Business School. Featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, Fortune, CNBC, and The Today Show. Biography The reason capable graduates plateau in their first two years is rarely the reason their managers give. It is almost never effort or intelligence. It is the gap between what new hires were told work would reward and what their organisations actually reward, a gap that is invisible to the people who already know the rules and punishing to those who do not. The Unspoken Rules, published by Harvard Business Review Press and built on more than five hundred structured interviews, names that gap and gives organisations a vocabulary for closing it. Gorick Ng wrote the book that Harvard Business School now hands to every MBA, and he teaches the same material to undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley. As a career adviser at Harvard College, he works directly with first-generation and low-income students, the population on whom the cost of unspoken rules is highest. The work moved from classroom to corporate quickly. Aon, BNP Paribas, GE, Google, IBM, Invesco, Kirkland and Ellis, and Charles River Associates have used the content in manager training, new-hire onboarding, and DEI programming. UC Berkeley, StartSe, and Singularity University have commissioned him on adjacent themes including innovation and how authors and founders build audiences in the AI search era. His authority comes from sitting on both sides of the question. Before academia he was a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group and an investment banker at Credit Suisse, and a researcher with Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work project. He has watched professional-services organisations make the same recurring mistakes with early-career talent, and his frameworks are written for the specific tensions those organisations face, not for a general audience. Thinkers50 named The Unspoken Rules one of the ten best new management books of 2022 and named Gorick to its 30 Thinkers to Watch list the same year. The work has since been covered in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, Fortune, CNBC, and The Today Show. The recognition matters less than the practical point underneath it: very few speakers treat early-career navigation, manager onboarding, and first-generation inclusion as one connected problem with one connected research base, and that is what large employers buy him for. Key speaking topics Early-career talent attraction and retention Manager development for frontline and people-leader cohorts Inclusive management of first-generation and underrepresented professionals Onboarding and the school-to-work transition Employee Resource Group programming and DEI training content Ownership and performance behaviours in early-career roles The future of work and early-career expectations Ideal for CHROs, heads of talent, and learning and development leads designing onboarding or manager training at scale. Heads of DEI and ERG sponsors building substantive programming for first-generation and underrepresented professionals. Professional-services and corporate firms with large early-career intakes (consulting, banking, law, accounting, technology). Talent leaders addressing mid-career stagnation among senior associates, senior managers, and VPs in firms where the path to the top narrows sharply. University and graduate-school audiences at convocation, orientation, and career-readiness events. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary across managers and new hires for the behaviours that quietly determine early-career progression. Specific manager actions that reduce avoidable attrition in the first two years, drawn from named patterns in the research. A practical lens for ERG and DEI work that translates inclusion into observable workplace behaviours, not slogans. Onboarding content that addresses what first-generation and underrepresented hires need to hear that their peers already know. Confidence among early-career employees that career progression is learnable, not a matter of background.

Why organisations work with Mel Abraham A practitioner’s view of personal finance, not a motivational one. Thirty years as a CPA advising founders and high earners sits behind every framework he teaches. Financial wellbeing translated into a workforce metric. His employee financial wellness sessions connect personal money stress directly to productivity, retention, and engagement numbers a CFO recognises. A published, repeatable system. Building Your Money Machine and its Wealth Priority Ladder give audiences a sequenced model they can act on the next morning, not a set of principles to remember. Credibility at the top of the speaker profession. The Certified Speaking Professional designation is held by fewer than one in ten working speakers, and Abraham earned it on top of the CPA qualification. A founder’s story buyers can verify. He built, sold, and reinvested through a cancer diagnosis and recovery, which is why the work avoids the abstract optimism that defines most personal-finance content. Biography highlights USA Today bestselling author of Building Your Money Machine (Hay House, 2024). International bestselling author of The Entrepreneur’s Solution. Certified Public Accountant with more than 30 years of advisory experience to founders and entrepreneurs. Certified Speaking Professional, National Speakers Association. Host of the Building Your Money Machine podcast and YouTube show, reaching around two million viewers. Has shared stages with Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard, Arianna Huffington, Ed Mylett, and Amy Porterfield. Biography The gap between earning a high income and being financially free is wider than most professionals expect. Lifestyle absorbs salary growth, savings sit idle, and the moment when work becomes a choice keeps moving further out. Mel Abraham has spent three decades inside that gap as a CPA advising founders and high earners, and his work begins with the mechanics of closing it. Building Your Money Machine, his 2024 USA Today bestseller, sets out the sequence: earn, grow, protect. The book introduces the Wealth Priority Ladder and the Five Incomes, frameworks he uses to move audiences from a single salary to a portfolio of cash-producing assets. It followed The Entrepreneur’s Solution, an earlier international bestseller written for owner-operators trying to scale without trading their lives for the business. Inside organisations, Abraham translates the same material into a workforce argument. Personal financial stress shows up as distraction, presenteeism, and turnover, and his Financial Wellness, The Missing Link to Employee Wellness programme reframes it as a measurable productivity issue rather than a soft benefit. Buyers tend to be CHROs, founders, and benefits leads who want financial literacy treated with the same seriousness as physical and mental health. The Certified Speaking Professional designation, held by under one in ten working speakers, sits alongside the CPA credential. The combination is unusual, and it is what allows Abraham to take a stage at a sales kickoff of 20,000 or a boardroom of 10 and treat both as exercises in numerical precision. Key speaking topics Personal financial freedom and wealth-building systems Employee financial wellness and productivity Entrepreneurship and founder economics Wealth priority sequencing for high earners Legacy planning and intergenerational wealth Money mindset and behavioural finance Ideal for Sales conferences, founder summits, and entrepreneur networks CHROs and benefits leads building financial wellbeing into the employee proposition Wealth management, banking, and financial services events for client audiences Professional services firms and partnerships addressing partner and associate financial literacy Audience outcomes A sequenced model for converting earned income into income-producing assets A clearer view of which financial moves come first, second, and third Language for treating financial wellbeing as a measurable workforce outcome, not a benefit line item A founder’s account of building wealth through health crisis and business reinvention Tools drawn from a CPA practice rather than a motivational frame

Why organisations work with Russell Beck His 6C© model (Compensation, Career, Cause, Community, Culture, Company) gives people teams a structured, actionable framework for talent strategy: not a list of principles, but a diagnostic and planning tool organisations can apply directly. His career spans engineering project leadership across 25 countries, European Head of Talent at Yahoo!, MD of a £120m talent outsourcing business, and Global Head of Consulting at Impellam Group: a level of operational depth that most future-of-work commentators do not have. The World of Work to 2030 was recognised by the Financial Times as a business book to read and won the Institute of Leadership’s Book of the Year giving his frameworks independent, named validation rather than self-asserted authority. He translates megatrend analysis into specific commercial decisions. His sessions leave teams with a clear view of what the talent market will require of them by 2030, not just why it matters. Biography highlights Author of The World of Work to 2030, published by Bloomsbury Business (2024) Winner, Institute of Leadership Leadership Book of the Year 2024 Recognised by the Financial Times as a business book to read; regular interviewee in the FT Former European Head of Talent, Yahoo! – built one of the first pan-European talent functions Former Managing Director, Carlisle Managed Solutions – grew business to £120m turnover in 30 months; former Global Head of Consulting, Impellam Group Engineering project leader across 25+ countries, including a USD500m programme; co-owner and Director of Inspiration, ImagineThinkDo Biography Work is changing faster than most organisations’ talent strategies can keep up with. The labour market that defined hiring and retention practices for the last thirty years has shifted structurally, and the organisations still winning on compensation alone are discovering the limits of that approach. Russell Beck has spent three decades working through this tension as an operator running large-scale engineering programmes across 25 countries to building Yahoo!’s first pan-European talent function, to leading a £120m talent outsourcing business as Managing Director. His book, The World of Work to 2030, published by Bloomsbury Business, maps the megatrends reshaping organisations and careers and translates them into a practical action framework. It won the Institute of Leadership’s Leadership Book of the Year in 2024 and was recognised by the Financial Times as a business book to read. The book’s argument is not that change is coming, it is that most organisations are already behind, and that closing that gap requires deliberate, structured action on people strategy now. The 6C© model (Compensation, Career, Cause, Community, Culture, Company) is Beck’s proprietary framework for diagnosing and rebuilding talent strategy in a market where employees hold structural leverage. It has been deployed with organisations across sectors including Vodafone, the NHS, Cambridge University Press and the Top Employers Institute. Through ImagineThinkDo, the consultancy and development firm he co-owns with Alison Beck, he works directly with senior leadership teams on workforce transformation, leadership development and cultural change. His perspective combines the research discipline of an engineer, the strategic experience of an operator who has led at scale, and the practical tools of a practitioner who has done the work inside organisations, not just advised on it from outside. Key speaking topics Future of work and workforce strategy Talent attraction, retention and the 6C© model Organisational culture and belonging The multigenerational workforce Purpose-led leadership Leadership in uncertainty Future skills and employability Megatrends and their organisational implications Ideal for CHROs and people directors designing future-fit talent strategy Senior leadership teams navigating workforce transformation Talent, learning and organisational development functions CEOs and MDs seeking a commercially grounded view of the future labour market Audience outcomes A structured view of the megatrends reshaping work, and their specific implications for organisational and talent strategy Familiarity with the 6C© model as a practical tool for rebuilding attraction and retention approaches Clearer understanding of why belonging – not diversity alone – determines whether inclusion strategies deliver measurable outcomes Practical steps leaders can take to close the gap between current people strategy and what the labour market will require by 2030 A leadership lens for embedding purpose and meaning at work in ways that affect retention and performance

Why organisations work with Anna Allerton She built her authority inside a 17-year operational career at Sky, including founding and producing Sky’s Sportswomen programme, so she speaks about high-pressure performance from inside it rather than outside it. Her Management Today 35 Women Under 35 listing and editorial track record give buyers a credible name on the panel for senior internal audiences who are sceptical of the wellness market. She is qualified through the Academy of Executive Coaching, the triple-accredited UK training body, and runs a 1:1 executive coaching practice alongside the speaking work, which means workshop content lands as coaching, not awareness. Her client list, including Workday, IMG, the Premier League, Sky, The Forward Trust and NBCU New York, shows she has tested the same content across financial, sports, media and broadcast environments at senior level. She writes on the topic for serious audiences, including a co-authored chapter in Myths of Menopause (Sequoia Books, edited by Dr Nicky Keay), giving organisations published material they can circulate internally after the session. Biography highlights Founder and Director of Allerton Coaching & Consulting 17-year career at Sky, including roles at Sky Sports News from Sub-Editor through to Global Head of Internal Communications Founder and producer of Sky’s Sportswomen, launched in 2012 as the first dedicated women’s sport TV programme of its kind Named in Management Today‘s 35 Women Under 35 Trained and qualified executive coach with the Academy of Executive Coaching Co-author of a chapter in Myths of Menopause (Sequoia Books, edited by Dr Nicky Keay) Clients include Workday, IMG, Sky, the Premier League, The Forward Trust, Whisper, NBCU New York and Age UK Featured in Grazia, Stylist, Times Radio and We Are The City Biography Sportswomen launched on Sky Sports in 2012 as the first British TV programme dedicated entirely to women’s sport. Anna Allerton founded and produced it, and it ran inside one of the most demanding live broadcast environments in UK sport. That credit, alongside seventeen years of editorial and production roles at Sky Sports News, is the reason her work on women in the workplace lands differently from most. She came back from her second maternity leave at 38 with debilitating symptoms that took a year to be correctly diagnosed as perimenopause. The experience pushed her to retrain through the Academy of Executive Coaching, the UK’s triple-accredited training body, and to build a practice specifically around keeping experienced women in senior roles through their forties and fifties. The work now runs on two tracks. A 1:1 executive coaching practice for senior women, and a consulting and speaking offer for organisations on what a menopause-inclusive workplace actually looks like in operating terms. Clients to date include Workday, IMG, the Premier League, Sky, The Forward Trust, Whisper, NBCU New York and Age UK. She co-authored a chapter in Myths of Menopause, edited by Dr Nicky Keay and published by Sequoia Books, and has written and spoken in Grazia, Stylist and Times Radio. What makes her useful in a boardroom rather than a wellness slot is the angle. She frames menopause as a talent-retention question first and a wellbeing question second. She was named in Management Today‘s 35 Women Under 35 for her work in sports journalism, not for her current specialism, and that older credential is part of why senior internal audiences take the newer one seriously. Key speaking topics Perimenopause and menopause in the workplace Talent retention of women in their 40s and 50s Women’s leadership and career navigation through midlife Women in sport and women’s sports journalism Returning to senior roles after maternity leave Menopause-inclusive workplace policy and practice Mental health and wellbeing for senior women Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and talent leaders designing retention strategy for women in senior roles Executive teams and ERGs in financial, professional services, media and sport launching menopause workplace programmes Senior women’s networks and leadership development cohorts in the 35 to 55 age range Boards and ExCos commissioning a credible non-clinical voice on menopause as a business issue Audience outcomes A clear reframing of perimenopause and menopause as a talent-retention and performance issue, with management implications Practical language for line managers and senior women to use when the conversation comes up at work An honest account, drawn from a high-pressure broadcast career, of what symptoms actually do to focus, confidence and decision-making Specific organisational examples from work with Workday, IMG, the Premier League, Sky and others Reference material from Myths of Menopause and Allerton’s published writing for internal follow-up

Why organisations work with Wema Hoover She ran global DEI inside four of the most scrutinised employers in the world: Google, Pfizer, Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb. The advice is shaped by what survives in regulated, multinational environments. She separates the politics of DEI from the operating substance, which lets boards keep the practice going without the labels that now invite litigation and activist pressure. Her work covers the full stack: hiring, promotion, belonging, manager capability, and how leadership teams behave under public scrutiny. Not awareness training. She writes for Fast Company on the structural questions, gender investment, leadership double standards, beyond the DEI backlash, which means buyers get a thinker, not a workshop facilitator. Coqual Hidden Brain Drain Task Force membership signals she works alongside the most serious researchers in this field, not adjacent to them. Biography highlights Former Global Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Google Former Chief Diversity Officer / Global Head of DEI at Pfizer, Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb Published contributor at Fast Company, Inc. and Diversity Magazine Member, Coqual Hidden Brain Drain Task Force Board member, Ten By Three MSc Human Resource Management and Master’s Certificate in Organizational Change Management, The New School; BA Psychology, Rutgers; GPHR certified Biography The DEI conversation has fractured. Court rulings, shareholder activism and political pressure have made the language toxic in some markets, while the underlying organisational questions, who gets hired, who gets promoted, who feels they belong, are now more commercially material than they have been in a decade. Wema Hoover spent the last fifteen years running that practice inside large, regulated, global employers. As Global Head of DEI at Google, and in equivalent senior roles at Pfizer, Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb, she designed and operated inclusion programmes in the kinds of environments where the work has to clear legal, board, regulator and workforce scrutiny. That operator background is what makes her useful now. She is not arguing for DEI as a value; she is showing leadership teams how to keep the operating substance, hiring discipline, manager capability, advancement pipelines, belonging metrics, without the rhetorical scaffolding that has become a liability. Her Fast Company writing and her “Beyond the DEI Backlash” work track the same argument in public. She holds an MSc in Human Resource Management and a Master’s-level Certificate in Organizational Change Management from The New School, a BA in Psychology from Rutgers, and a Global Professional in Human Resources certification. She sits on Coqual’s Hidden Brain Drain Task Force, the working group most senior corporate DEI heads consult on talent equity research. Key speaking topics Inclusion strategy after the DEI backlash Belonging and culture inside global, regulated employers Women’s advancement, sponsorship and the leadership double standard Manager capability for inclusive teams Cross-cultural leadership in multinational workforces Executive coaching for senior leaders navigating cultural change Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers managing inclusion programmes through political and legal headwinds Boards and ExCos that need to reset their position on DEI without abandoning the substance Global employers with regulated workforces (pharma, tech, financial services) where inclusion is tied to talent risk Senior leadership development programmes for newly promoted women and underrepresented executives Audience outcomes A clear read on what has changed in the DEI landscape, in the US and globally, and what that means for their own programme design A working distinction between inclusion as compliance theatre and inclusion as operating capability Practical decisions on which existing initiatives to keep, which to retire and which to rename Confidence in how to brief their board on DEI in the current environment without overpromising or retreating A sharper view of where sponsorship and advocacy, not training, actually move the dial on women’s advancement

Why organisations work with Jim Knight Twenty years inside Hard Rock International leading global training, not a consultant looking in from outside. The frameworks he teaches were stress-tested across cafes, hotels, and casinos in fifty-plus countries. A culture and service argument anchored in three books (Culture That Rocks, Leadership That Rocks, Service That Rocks), the last two Amazon No. 1 bestsellers, with a consistent thesis rather than a topic catalogue. Practical fluency in the operating mechanics of training, onboarding, and frontline development. The work translates for hospitality, retail, franchise, and any business where the customer meets the brand through a junior employee. A delivery style built for energy-driven audiences. Knight’s background as a music teacher and his Hard Rock pedigree mean conference and franchise audiences treat him as a peer, not an academic visitor. Biography highlights Twenty years leading Global Training and Development for Hard Rock International, including Corporate University, e-learning, and leadership transition programmes. Founder and CEO of Knight Speaker, delivering culture, leadership, service, and engagement programmes worldwide. Author of Culture That Rocks (third edition), Leadership That Rocks (Amazon No. 1), and Service That Rocks (Amazon No. 1). Contributing member of the Rolling Stone Culture Council since 2020. Co-host of the Thoughts That Rock leadership podcast with Brant Menswar. Multiple Telly Awards for corporate training video, plus Brandon Hall Gold Best in Class for service recovery e-learning. Lifetime member of CHART. Biography Hard Rock built a global brand on the idea that the cafe, the hotel, and the casino should each feel like a live show. Holding that standard across more than fifty countries is not a marketing job. It is a training job. For two decades, Jim Knight ran that training function. That experience sits behind the Culture That Rocks series. The first book argued that culture is the operating system, not the wallpaper, and was named by Entrepreneur Magazine among the books most likely to change how a business is run. Leadership That Rocks and Service That Rocks extended the thesis into how leaders behave and how the customer actually feels the brand. Both reached Amazon’s No. 1 spot. The work translates particularly well for organisations whose product is delivered by frontline staff at scale: hospitality, retail, franchise systems, healthcare networks, and any consumer brand where a twenty-year-old in a uniform is the face of a billion-dollar logo. Knight speaks to those audiences as someone who has trained that workforce, not theorised about it. Beyond the speaking practice, he co-hosts the Thoughts That Rock podcast with Brant Menswar, contributes to the Rolling Stone Culture Council, and supports No Kid Hungry and Cannonball Kids’ Cancer through book and speaking proceeds. Among bureau-circuit culture speakers, the rarity is the operator pedigree. Most started as consultants. Knight started inside the room. Key speaking topics Organisational culture Customer experience and service differentiation Employee engagement and retention Leadership development Team building and frontline talent Hospitality, franchise, and consumer-brand operations Ideal for CHROs, learning and development leaders, and culture leads in consumer-facing organisations Franchise systems and multi-site operators where culture must scale across independent owners Hospitality, retail, and service-brand leadership audiences Conference and annual-meeting audiences looking for a high-energy culture keynote with operating substance Audience outcomes A working definition of culture as an operating system, with the mechanisms that hold it in place at scale Specific moves on hiring, onboarding, and frontline development drawn from Hard Rock’s training playbook A service-design lens for separating a brand experience from competitor parity Language and structure leaders can use to talk about engagement without falling into wellness-industry generalities

Why organisations work with Hollie Castro Operating record across the moments that test a people function: IPO transition at YETI, take-private of BMC Software under Bain Capital and Insight Partners, and VC-backed scale-up at Miro under Accel and ICONIQ. Sits credibly in the boardroom on AI and the workforce, co-chairing the NACD Austin chapter and leading director-level sessions on GenAI governance and the multigenerational workforce. Has actually run HR at global scale: workforces of 1,500 to 50,000, 90 countries, budgets to USD 200 million, 25-plus acquisitions integrated. Bridges Fortune 500 and late-stage start-up worlds, including current advisory work with HR-focused AI founders at Series A through her firm HC Advice. Recognised externally where it counts: Financial Times Group Top 100 Board Candidates and the HR Transformation award at Silicon Valley’s High Tech Symposium. Biography highlights Five-time CHRO and Chief Administration Officer: YETI, BMC Software, Talisman Energy, Miro, Kony. Co-Chair, Austin Advisory Board, National Association of Corporate Directors. Advisory Board Member, Texas A&M Mays School of Business Center for Human Resources. Stanford University and NACD certified Corporate Director; MBA, Thunderbird School of Global Management. Financial Times Group Top 100 Board Candidates; HR Transformation award, Silicon Valley High Tech Symposium. Published in Fast Company, Forbes, The Corporate Board, and Directors & Boards; featured at HR Retail and on the Revenue Builders podcast. Biography Few HR leaders have sat in the seat across as many high-pressure transitions. As CHRO, Castro took YETI through its IPO from private equity ownership at Cortec, led BMC Software through its take-private under Bain Capital and Insight Partners, and ran people strategy at Miro and Kony alongside Accel and ICONIQ Capital. The thread across those mandates is the same: HR as an operating discipline tied to capital events, not a support function. Her scope has been unusually broad. Workforces of 1,500 to 50,000, operations in 90 countries, budgets to USD 200 million, and more than 25 acquisitions integrated. That range includes the cultural architecture work that ESG and compensation committees now ask for, as well as the harder M&A integration calls that decide whether a deal earns its thesis. The board work has become a second discipline. Castro co-chairs the Austin advisory board of the National Association of Corporate Directors and led the 2024 NACD Director Summit conversation on how boards govern GenAI alongside a five-generation workforce. She is a Stanford and NACD certified Corporate Director, a Thunderbird MBA, and was named to the Financial Times Group’s Top 100 Board Candidates. Today she advises HR-focused AI founders at Series A through HC Advice and writes for Fast Company, Forbes, The Corporate Board, and Directors & Boards on the governance questions that follow when HR is asked to deploy AI at scale. Key speaking topics The CHRO as a strategic business partner Generative AI in HR and talent acquisition Global HR strategy and M&A integration Board governance of AI and the workforce Scaling people functions through IPO and take-private events ESG, compensation, and human capital in the boardroom The multigenerational workforce Agile HR and design thinking Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and CPO-track HR leaders preparing for board-facing roles. Boards, compensation committees, and audit committees engaging with AI, human capital, and ESG oversight. CEOs and executive teams in private equity portfolio companies or scale-ups preparing for IPO, M&A, or take-private events. Leadership programmes for senior women in operating and director roles. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what boards now expect from HR on AI, talent risk, and human capital reporting. Specific reference points on integrating HR through IPO, take-private, and cross-border M&A. A working view of how generative AI is changing talent acquisition and the CHRO operating model. Director-level language for governing AI ethics, workforce design, and compensation in tandem.

Why organisations work with Eric Termuende He gives leadership teams a working language for incremental change. The “one-degree shift” framework reframes culture work as a sequence of small, low-resistance moves teams can actually make, instead of a programme to be launched. His research base is original. Rethink Work and the surveys behind it focus on what attracts and retains the right people for a specific workplace, not the best people in the abstract, which is a more useful question for most CHROs. He pitches at team level, not enterprise level. Most future-of-work speakers operate at workforce-strategy altitude. Termuende speaks to the manager and the leader of leaders, which is where engagement and retention are actually won or lost. He has tested the material against operating environments at Amazon, IBM, Coca-Cola, Toyota, and Nokia. The keynotes have been refined through repeated commercial use, not built for the stage. Biography highlights Co-Founder of NoW of Work, a workplace innovation and leadership consultancy. Author of Rethink Work (Barlow Books), an Amazon best-seller on engagement and retention. Named to American Express’s Top 100 Emerging Innovators under 35. 2022 Arch Award for Early Career Achievement, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary. TEDx speaker (TEDxBCIT, “Bigger than Work”) and Walrus Talks contributor. Host of the One Degree Shift podcast, interviewing operators and executives on incremental team change. Biography Most culture programmes fail not because the diagnosis is wrong, but because the prescribed change is too big to land. Teams are asked to adopt new behaviours on top of existing workload, and the new behaviours do not survive the first quarter. Eric Termuende’s work begins from this observation. The argument running through Rethink Work and the surveys behind it is that engagement and retention are decided at the team level, by a small number of recurring behaviours, and that the right intervention is operational rather than aspirational. NoW of Work, the consultancy Termuende co-founded, is built around that premise. The “one-degree shift” framework is its working vocabulary: small, specific behaviour changes designed to reduce friction and build trust without triggering another transformation initiative. The credentials sit underneath the argument. American Express named him to its Top 100 Emerging Innovators. The University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business gave him its Arch Award for Early Career Achievement in 2022. The material has been refined in front of audiences at Amazon, IBM, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Nokia, and Zoom, and on TEDx and Walrus stages. For senior people leaders, the proposition is unusually concrete. Termuende leaves an audience with a way to act on Monday morning, not a thesis to debate. That is rare in the future-of-work category, where most speakers operate one level too high to be useful to the line managers who actually run the teams. Key speaking topics Future of work and workforce design Team performance and trust Talent attraction and retention Workplace culture and engagement Multigenerational teams Leadership in uncertainty AI and the manager’s role Ideal for CHROs and people leaders responsible for engagement and retention strategy Leadership development and learning teams designing manager curricula Operations and divisional leaders running multigenerational teams under change Executive offsites focused on culture and talent in growth or post-merger contexts Audience outcomes A working framework for designing small behavioural shifts that hold at team level A clearer answer to which people the organisation should be attracting, not just how to attract more Practical positions on the multigenerational workforce that line managers can apply A reframing of culture work as operational practice, not communications activity

Why organisations work with Anton Gunn He has operated at the level his audiences operate at. Advising a President on national health policy and running diversity and external affairs inside a federal department is not a case study he read; it is the room he was in. His World-Class Culture framework gives executives a named, structured approach to retention and culture rather than another values poster. It has been applied inside Pfizer, KPMG, Microsoft, HCA Healthcare and Mercedes-Benz Vans. He talks about inclusion as an operating capability, not a political position. For boards navigating contested ground on DEI, that distinction is the reason he gets booked. His credibility carries on both sides of the executive table: a Harvard Institute of Politics fellow with a Certified Speaking Professional designation, an MSW, and seven years inside senior healthcare leadership at MUSC. Biography highlights Former senior advisor to President Barack Obama; Director of External Affairs, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, leading stakeholder engagement for Affordable Care Act implementation Former Executive Director and Chief Diversity Officer, Medical University of South Carolina Resident Fellow, Harvard Institute of Politics Bestselling author of Just Lead, The Presidential Principles, and The Audacity of Leadership Certified Speaking Professional, a designation held by fewer than 10 percent of professional speakers worldwide Featured in TIME, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, NPR, BBC and Good Morning America Biography The Affordable Care Act needed people to believe in it before it could function. As Director of External Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Anton Gunn led the stakeholder engagement that turned a contested federal statute into something hospitals, employers and citizens could act on. That work, advising President Obama and Secretary Sebelius, is the reference point his clients hire him for. He has since spent close to a decade translating that experience into a body of executive practice. As Chief Diversity Officer and Executive Director at the Medical University of South Carolina, he ran inclusion as an operating function inside a complex healthcare institution, not as a communications exercise. His framework, World-Class Culture, codifies the seven behaviours he saw separate retention-positive cultures from the rest. His three books trace the same argument from different angles. The Audacity of Leadership set out the principles. The Presidential Principles distilled what he learned watching Obama lead in real time. Just Lead, his 2022 bestseller, gave operators 44 specific actions for retention and culture. Pfizer, KPMG, Microsoft, T-Mobile, SHRM and Mercedes-Benz Vans have all brought him in to apply that work. He is a Harvard Institute of Politics fellow and a Certified Speaking Professional, a designation held by under 10 percent of speakers globally. The combination buyers respond to is rarer than either credential alone: a former White House operator who has also run culture and inclusion inside a 17,000-person institution, and who can talk to a board in the language of accountability rather than aspiration. Key speaking topics Values-based leadership Workplace culture and retention Inclusive leadership Trust as an executive capability Crisis leadership and recovery Talent strategy in healthcare and regulated industries Ideal for Boards and CEOs navigating culture and retention under restructure CHROs and Chief Diversity Officers building inclusion as an operating discipline Senior leadership teams in healthcare, financial services and regulated industries Public sector and policy audiences working at the boundary of government and enterprise Audience outcomes A named, repeatable framework for diagnosing and rebuilding workplace culture A clearer view of where executive trust is earned and where it is forfeited Concrete actions for retention drawn from the Just Lead framework A working definition of inclusive leadership that holds up in front of a sceptical board An inside view of decision-making at the senior levels of the Obama administration