Talent Retention Strategies

Why organisations work with Yael Leibovitz Tannenbaum She has spent two decades inside the hiring rooms of financial and technology organisations, so her recommendations target the specific points where bias enters a recruitment process. Her work with Mekorot’s Committee for the Advancement of Women and Haredi Women In Tech gives her a track record on one of the harder workforce integration problems: bringing ultra-Orthodox women into mainstream Israeli technology employment. Co-developed “The Double-Glass Ceiling” with Chani Zisman, a talk delivered at the European Parliament that translates the secular and ultra-Orthodox divide into terms a mixed audience can act on. Trains hiring managers in practical interview redesign, not abstract awareness, which means HR teams leave with changes they can put into a process the following week. Biography highlights Twenty-plus years in HR and recruitment across financial services and technology Staff training delivery at SCE Shamoon College of Engineering Manager preparation programmes at Israel Electric Corporation Work with Mekorot’s Committee for the Advancement of Women Co-delivered talks at the European Parliament and the Women and Economy conference in India Active engagement with the Haredi Women In Tech community Biography Most diversity programmes are built around the wrong question. They ask how an organisation describes itself to candidates, when the harder question is how the organisation reads candidates in the room. Yael Leibovitz Tannenbaum has spent two decades on the inside of that problem, working with financial and technology employers whose recruitment processes were quietly filtering out the people they said they wanted to hire. Her training is in HR and recruitment. Her practical reputation comes from a specific seam in Israeli workforce policy: bringing ultra-Orthodox women into secular technology and financial sector employment, where neither side of the table has been trained to read the other. Her work with Mekorot’s Committee for the Advancement of Women and with Haredi Women In Tech operates directly on that translation problem. The signature output of this work is “The Double-Glass Ceiling,” co-developed with Chani Zisman and delivered at the European Parliament, the Women and Economy conference in India, and to the Prague Jewish community. The talk makes the secular-religious workplace divide legible to audiences who have no working knowledge of it, then identifies the specific decisions through which mixed teams either close the gap or reinforce it. Alongside the keynote work, she trains hiring managers and HR teams in interview redesign and conscious decision-making. The format is closer to a workshop than a lecture, and the result is process change rather than a refreshed values statement. Key speaking topics Inclusive recruitment and interview design Unconscious bias in hiring decisions Cross-cultural workforce integration Storytelling for career advancement Decision-making under organisational complexity Workforce participation of underrepresented groups Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent acquisition reviewing hiring processes DEI leads designing programmes that survive the interview stage Hiring managers and interview panels in technology and financial services Boards examining workforce participation across underrepresented communities Audience outcomes A clearer view of where bias enters the recruitment funnel and which interventions actually move the numbers Practical interview tools that hiring managers can apply in the next round of recruitment A working understanding of the cultural and linguistic frictions that block integration of underrepresented groups Sharper instincts for the difference between cultural fit and capability when assessing candidates

Why organisations work with Jahkini Bisselink She sits inside Whetston Strategic Foresight, a practice built for long-range corporate planning, which means her insights arrive as briefable strategy inputs rather than generational commentary. She is one of the few speakers who is both a member of Generation Z and a trained foresight researcher of it, which closes the gap between authentic voice and analytical distance. Her UN Youth Representative work involved structured consultations with more than 4,000 young people, giving her data depth most generational speakers cannot match. Senior clients including Deutsche Telekom, the European Parliament, and Lloyds Banking Group have used her to shape leadership conversations about Gen Z, not as a panel novelty. She works in English and Dutch, and she presents to boards, HR functions, and customer experience teams without translating the message between them. Biography highlights Dutch United Nations Youth Representative, 2017 to 2019, elected through open national election. First UN General Assembly speech delivered at age 18. Youth expert at Whetston Strategic Foresight, Amsterdam, since 2020. TEDxYouth@Maastricht speaker, March 2019, “Why Youth Participation is Key”. Named in MIPAD (Most Influential People of African Descent) Class of 2023. Corporate clients include Deutsche Telekom, the European Parliament, Lloyds Banking Group, Rabobank, R/GA, and AVEVA. Biography A quarter of the workforce is now Generation Z, and most leadership teams are still describing them in language borrowed from coverage of millennials a decade earlier. The result is a steady mismatch between what organisations design for younger employees and customers, and what those groups actually want. Closing that gap is now a board-level problem, not an HR one. Bisselink works inside Whetston Strategic Foresight in Amsterdam, where her job is to translate generational research into corporate strategy. Whetston is a foresight practice, not a marketing agency, which shapes how her work lands: she briefs leadership teams the way a strategy consultant would, with a defined argument and named implications, rather than offering generational colour. Her credibility on Gen Z is built on two layers. She is a member of the generation, born in Amsterdam in 1999. She also spent two years as the Dutch United Nations Youth Representative, running structured consultations with more than 4,000 young people across the country and presenting their views at the UN General Assembly in New York. That fieldwork, conducted before she joined Whetston, is the data foundation under her current commercial work. Boards and HR functions at Deutsche Telekom, Lloyds Banking Group, the European Parliament, and Rabobank have used her to pressure-test assumptions about how their next generation of employees and customers actually decide. She was recognised in the MIPAD Class of 2023 for the same body of work. Key speaking topics Generation Z in the workforce The multigenerational workplace Future of customer experience Strategic foresight and generational trends Corporate purpose and youth activism Talent attraction and retention for the next generation Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent rebuilding attraction and retention strategies around a Gen Z-majority workforce CMOs and customer experience leaders whose growth segment is now Gen Z Executive teams and boards reviewing workforce, culture, and brand strategy through a generational lens Public sector and policy bodies that need a credible Gen Z voice in stakeholder conversations Audience outcomes A clearer read on what Gen Z employees and customers actually decide on, separated from common media generalisations. Specific implications for how attraction, retention, and customer strategy need to change inside the audience’s own organisation. A working understanding of the friction points between four working generations and where leaders are still managing on outdated assumptions. Direct exposure to a Gen Z researcher whose evidence base is consultation work, not commentary.

Why organisations work with Tim Campbell A founder’s view of what early-stage capital, mentoring and access actually do for people who do not start with networks, drawn from supporting more than 750 start-ups through the Bright Ideas Trust A senior commercial perspective on inclusion that connects diversity to talent acquisition and business outcomes, informed by his strategic adviser work in global recruitment Public recognition that opens doors at executive and audience level: MBE for Services to Enterprise Culture, two decades of broadcast presence on The Apprentice, and a seat on the Windrush Commemoration Committee A practitioner’s read on what makes a small business survive its first three years, codified in his co-authored book with Paul Humphries published by Headline Biography highlights Winner of the first series of BBC’s The Apprentice in 2005, hired by Sir Alan Sugar as Project Director of Amstrad’s Health and Beauty division Co-founder of the Bright Ideas Trust, which raised over GBP 3m and supported more than 750 start-ups from disadvantaged backgrounds Appointed MBE in 2012 for Services to Enterprise Culture Co-author of “What’s Your Bright Idea? The Journey to Starting Your Own Business” (Headline, 2010) Member of the UK Government’s Windrush Commemoration Committee Returned to The Apprentice as Lord Sugar’s permanent advisor from Series 18 onwards Biography The Apprentice in 2005 was the first time most British viewers had watched a hiring decision broadcast as entertainment. Tim Campbell, a senior planner at London Underground, won the series and took the GBP 100,000 job at Amstrad as Project Director of a new Health and Beauty division. The interesting work began two years later. In 2007 Campbell co-founded the Bright Ideas Trust with Paul Humphries and Richard Morris. The model was specific: equity-style early-stage capital and structured mentoring for 16 to 30 year olds who could not raise money through conventional networks. By the time the trust had matured, it had raised more than GBP 3m and supported over 750 start-ups. The work earned an MBE in 2012 for Services to Enterprise Culture and a co-authored book with Humphries, “What’s Your Bright Idea?”, published by Headline. The second arc of his career moved that founder perspective into large organisations. Campbell has held senior roles in talent acquisition and inclusion strategy, advising on diversity, equity and social mobility inside global recruitment, and sits on the UK Government’s Windrush Commemoration Committee. He returned to The Apprentice as Lord Sugar’s aide and now holds the role permanently from Series 18. The throughline is the gap between organisational claims about entrepreneurial culture and inclusion, and what actually happens to people inside the business and outside it. Campbell has worked both sides of that gap, as a founder building a vehicle for capital flow into underrepresented entrepreneurs, and as a senior adviser inside companies that have to decide whether their inclusion language is reflected in who gets hired, funded and promoted. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and early-stage business Inclusive talent acquisition and social mobility Resilience in a founder’s career Diversity and inclusion as commercial strategy Leadership through change Personal and organisational reinvention Ideal for Boards and executive teams reviewing the commercial logic of their inclusion strategy CHROs and talent leaders rethinking pipelines into underrepresented communities Founders, scale-up leaders and intrapreneurs inside corporate environments Audiences at staff conferences and ERG events seeking a credible voice on enterprise and inclusion Audience outcomes A clearer view of what early-stage entrepreneurial support looks like when it is built around access, not just funding A practical sense of how diversity commitments translate into hiring, promotion and supplier decisions A founder’s perspective on resilience, drawn from a public career and a charity built and run for over a decade A reframing of inclusion as a commercial discipline tied to talent and growth, not a separate values conversation

Why organisations work with Grace Lordan She runs the only research centre of its kind inside a top-tier university focused on bringing behavioural science to inclusion at firm level, The Inclusion Initiative at LSE, which gives her findings weight that internal DEI teams cannot generate alone. Her work tells senior leaders which interventions actually shift hiring, promotion, and retention data, and which ones look good in a values statement but fail under measurement. She speaks the language of CFOs and boards, linking inclusion to productivity and performance, which is what gets budget approved and kept. She brings a practical behavioural toolkit, nudges, structured decision design, debiased processes, that leaders can install rather than aspire to. Her Penguin book Think Big has built a wide reader base among professionals, so audiences often arrive already familiar with her frame for individual career design, which makes the organisational material land faster. Biography highlights Associate Professor in Behavioural Science, London School of Economics and Political Science. Founding Director of The Inclusion Initiative at LSE, the research centre she established in 2020. Director of the MSc in Behavioural Science at LSE. Author of Think Big: Take Small Steps and Build the Future You Want (Penguin Life, 2021). Served on the UK government’s Skills and Productivity Board and the BEIS social mobility taskforce; advisory board member of the Women in Finance Charter. Contributor to Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fortune, Fast Company, and Reuters; host of the Work FORCE podcast. Biography Inclusion work inside firms has a credibility problem. Budgets have grown for a decade, yet most leadership teams struggle to show a clean line between their interventions and real movement in who gets hired, promoted, and retained. That is the gap Grace Lordan has built a career around closing. She is an Associate Professor in Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics and the founding director of The Inclusion Initiative, the LSE research centre she established in 2020 to bring behavioural science into how firms actually design talent decisions. Her research tests which interventions move the numbers and which do not, across hiring screens, promotion processes, and team composition. The work is published in peer-reviewed journals and picked up by Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management Review. She also directs the LSE MSc in Behavioural Science, teaches corporate decision-making to executive students, and has advised the UK government on skills, productivity, and social mobility. Her Penguin book Think Big: Take Small Steps and Build the Future You Want applies the same evidence base to individual career design, which is why professional audiences often encounter her ideas before they meet her in the room. What senior buyers get is someone who can talk to a CHRO about process design, to a CFO about productivity, and to a board about where their inclusion spend is working. The argument is built on evidence from an LSE research centre, not consultancy generalities. Key speaking topics Inclusion as a measurable driver of firm productivity Behavioural science applied to hiring and promotion decisions Designing teams for performance and progression The future of work and skills in a changing labour market Women’s progression and the economics of the gender gap Evidence-based leadership and debiased decision-making Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent responsible for moving measurable inclusion outcomes CEOs and boards allocating budget to DEI and wanting to know what actually works Financial services and professional services leadership teams working under the Women in Finance Charter or equivalent progression commitments Executive audiences across government, policy, and regulated sectors addressing skills and social mobility Audience outcomes A sharper read on which inclusion interventions have evidence behind them and which do not Specific behavioural design moves leaders can apply to hiring, promotion, and team decisions Language that connects inclusion to productivity and performance for CFO and board conversations A clearer view of where the future of work is moving for skills, talent pipelines, and progression Confidence to retire activities that signal good intent but fail on measurement

Why organisations work with Hannah Ubl She runs primary research on generational cohorts, including original work comparing Early Millennials, Recessionist Millennials and Gen Z, and brings the data into the room rather than recycling commentary She wrote the operating manual on the first wave of this problem. Managing Millennials For Dummies (Wiley, 2017) is still the most-cited mass-market field guide for line managers running mixed-generation teams Her follow-up book, The Future of Work is Human, gives HR and people leaders a framework for rebuilding trust, psychological safety and belonging when half the workforce is remote and the other half is fatigued She speaks to the layer most generational speakers skip. Audiences from new hires to C-suite at Cisco, Kraft Heinz, Sodexo and Springer Nature, with the same material translating across all of them A decade inside BridgeWorks as Research Director, then six years building Good Company Consulting, gives her the rare combination of researcher discipline and operator instinct on culture problems Biography highlights Co-founder, Good Company Consulting Co-author, Managing Millennials For Dummies (Wiley, 2017) with Lisa X. Walden and Debra Arbit Co-author, The Future of Work is Human: Transforming Company Culture for a Post-Pandemic World, with Lisa X. Walden Former Director of Research and Director of Keynote Speaking, BridgeWorks BS, Communications Studies (Advertising), Boston University Clients include Cisco, Kraft Heinz, Sodexo, Springer Nature, Applied Materials and NACS Biography Five generations now work alongside one another, and the assumptions each generation brings about communication, authority and loyalty no longer overlap. That gap is where Good Company Consulting was built. Ubl co-founded the firm after a decade at BridgeWorks, where she ran the national research programme comparing how millennial sub-cohorts and Gen Z behave inside organisations. The research feeds the keynotes directly. Managing Millennials For Dummies, written with Lisa X. Walden and Debra Arbit and published by Wiley in 2017, set the early reference text for line managers handling mixed-age teams. The Future of Work is Human, her second book with Walden, picks up the thread post-pandemic and reframes culture work as a question of trust, psychological safety and belonging across hybrid teams. What buyers commission her for is the translation layer. She turns cohort data into specific manager moves: how to give Gen Z feedback that lands, how to redesign hybrid rituals so they produce connection rather than performance, how to talk about AI without losing the human contract that holds a team together. Cisco, Kraft Heinz, Sodexo and Springer Nature have all used her to do the same job inside very different cultures. The reason her work travels is research discipline rather than charisma. She earned her stripes inside a research firm before she earned them on stage, and audiences from new hires to senior executives respond to the same material because the underlying argument is empirical, not motivational. Key speaking topics Generational integration in mixed-age teams Gen Z in the workplace Hybrid work and the rebuild of psychological safety Manager capability across generations Employee engagement and the post-pandemic social contract Compassionate leadership in practice Human connection in the age of AI Ideal for CHROs and Heads of People rebuilding engagement and manager capability across generations Leadership development and L&D teams designing programmes for new and mid-level managers Internal communications and culture leads redesigning hybrid rituals Sector audiences with five-generation workforces, including healthcare systems, retail, hospitality and manufacturing Audience outcomes A working understanding of what Gen Z actually wants from an employer, separated from the social media caricature Specific manager behaviours that close the friction between generational cohorts in day-to-day work A clearer view of which hybrid-work rituals build trust and which performatively waste time Language for talking about AI and automation without breaking the employee social contract A research-grounded position to take back to the executive team on engagement and culture investment

Why organisations work with Mark Noon He has built leadership benches inside two of the most accountability-driven environments in American working life: the U.S. Air Force medical system and Studer Group’s healthcare client base. Senior teams get someone who has run the work, not described it. His signature framework, Set Up To Step In, gives organisations a concrete method for preparing successors before the seat opens, drawn from his book Set Up: Timeless Leadership Skills for Your Success. He has coached and presented inside more than 300 organisations across 43 states and several countries, which means the playbook has been pressure-tested across hospital systems, military units, and civilian operating environments. He treats employee engagement as a discipline rather than a sentiment, anchored in structured one-on-one rounding practices that frontline managers can repeat weekly. He pairs Studer Group’s service excellence lineage with first-hand command experience, a combination that lands credibly with clinical leaders who are sceptical of theory imported from outside healthcare. Biography highlights Retired U.S. Air Force Major after roughly 20 years of service, including 12 years as a commissioned officer and clinical lab director. Career path moved from enlisted laboratory technician to officer with immediate appointment to a lab management role. Served across nine assignments in seven U.S. states and a tour of duty in the Middle East. Spent approximately eight years as a coach with Studer Group, working with healthcare systems on operational and service excellence. Currently a Professional Speaker, Executive Coach and Developer of Leaders with LeadershipTen. Author of Set Up: Timeless Leadership Skills for Your Success (T.H.E. Studer Group, 2018). Biography The hardest moment in any organisation is the one nobody schedules: a seat opens, and the person expected to fill it is not ready. That gap is rarely a hiring problem. It is the cumulative result of small leadership habits that were never made routine. Mark Noon spent 20 years inside the U.S. Air Force watching that pattern up close, then nearly a decade at Studer Group helping healthcare leaders fix it. He retired as a Major after 12 years as a commissioned officer and clinical lab director, with assignments across seven states and a tour in the Middle East. The path from enlisted lab technician to officer running a lab gave him a working theory of leadership grounded in operational reality rather than abstraction. That theory became Set Up: Timeless Leadership Skills for Your Success, published by T.H.E. Studer Group in 2018. The book and its companion keynote, Set Up To Step In, treat succession as a daily discipline, not an annual planning exercise. Leaders are not chosen, they are prepared, through repeatable habits that show up in how meetings are run, how feedback is given, and how one-on-one rounding is conducted with the people closest to the work. His client work now runs through LeadershipTen, where he coaches and speaks inside hospital systems, military units, and operationally demanding civilian organisations. The footprint covers more than 300 organisations across 43 states and several countries, which gives senior teams something useful: a coach who has seen which engagement and culture practices survive contact with a stretched workforce, and which do not. Key speaking topics Leader development and succession readiness Employee engagement and one-on-one rounding Culture aligned to strategy Healthcare leadership and service excellence Managing up and team reliability Lessons from military command for civilian leaders Ideal for Healthcare CEOs, COOs, and chief nursing officers building leader benches across hospital systems Heads of leadership development and learning leaders responsible for succession and frontline manager capability Senior military and veteran-serving organisations translating command experience into civilian operating practice Operationally complex organisations where frontline leadership turnover threatens service quality Audience outcomes A clear, named set of habits that distinguish leaders who are setting up successors from those who are not A working method for one-on-one rounding that frontline managers can run inside their existing week Language for talking about engagement as an operational discipline, not a survey result A frame for connecting daily leader behaviours to the strategy and culture senior teams have already committed to Confidence that the practices have been tested across military, healthcare, and civilian operating environments

Why organisations work with Chris Dyer He ran the experiment before he taught it. PeopleG2 was a fully remote business through five Inc. 5000 listings and fifteen “best place to work” cycles, which means his culture and remote-work models come from operating evidence, not consulting observation. His “7 Pillars” (Transparency, Positivity, Measurement, Acknowledgement, Uniqueness, Listening, Mistakes) give an executive team a shared diagnostic vocabulary for culture, replacing the usual mix of values posters and engagement-survey theatre. He works at the intersection of culture and remote design, where most speakers pick a side. Buyers wrestling with hybrid productivity, distributed leadership, and connection in dispersed teams get one voice on both questions. Inc. Magazine named him the #1 Leadership Speaker on Culture, and his client roster includes NASA, Johnson & Johnson, Intuit, IKEA, and Southwest Airlines, which signals he holds a senior room across regulated, industrial, tech, and consumer settings. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of PeopleG2, a fully remote background-screening company, five-time Inc. 5000 honoree. Author of The Power of Company Culture (Kogan Page) and co-author of Remote Work (Kogan Page). Named #1 Leadership Speaker on Culture by Inc. Magazine; ranked #5 on the LeadersHum Power List. Listed among Global Gurus Top 30 Organizational Culture Professionals. Forbes Business Council member, Fast Company Executive Board member, and contributor to Inc.com. Keynote clients include NASA, Johnson & Johnson, Intuit, IKEA, and Southwest Airlines. Biography Most companies treat culture as something HR runs and leaders endorse. PeopleG2 was built the other way around. Chris Dyer ran the firm as a fully remote operation while it landed on the Inc. 5000 list five times and was repeatedly named a best place to work, which made culture a daily operating decision rather than an annual initiative. That experience produced a specific framework. The Power of Company Culture, published by Kogan Page, sets out seven pillars: Transparency, Positivity, Measurement, Acknowledgement, Uniqueness, Listening, and Mistakes. The book’s argument is operational. Each pillar maps to behaviours leaders can audit, and the cases used to test it sit inside companies like General Motors, Southwest Airlines, and VaynerMedia. His second book, Remote Work, also with Kogan Page, addresses the harder follow-on question: how do you keep a culture intact when your workforce is distributed. Inc. Magazine subsequently named Dyer the #1 Leadership Speaker on Culture, and his keynote work has placed him in front of leadership teams at NASA, Johnson & Johnson, Intuit, IKEA, and Southwest Airlines. What buyers tend to take from Dyer is permission to stop treating culture as soft. He gives senior teams a vocabulary, a diagnostic, and a set of operator decisions, grounded in a business he built and ran rather than a model he assembled from interviews. Key speaking topics Company culture as an operating system The 7 Pillars framework Remote and hybrid workforce design Employee engagement and retention Leadership in distributed organisations Future of work and AI integration in the workplace Burnout and recession-period leadership Ideal for CHROs and heads of People rebuilding engagement and retention strategy CEOs and executive teams setting the direction on hybrid or fully remote operating models Culture and transformation leads inside organisations carrying out post-restructure rebuilds Leadership development functions designing programmes for distributed managers Audience outcomes A shared diagnostic for which cultural levers in their organisation are actually moving performance A practical view of how to run a distributed or hybrid workforce without losing cohesion An operator’s account of how engagement, retention, and productivity reinforce each other when the right pillars are in place Concrete tactics from a CEO who tested them inside a five-time Inc. 5000 company

Why organisations work with Anna Baréz-Brown A track record at scale: the Shine programme has reached thousands of women across four continents and more than 75 nationalities, with named corporate clients including WPP, Channel 4, TikTok, Rothschild & Co, and Google. Her work is built around retention and progression metrics, not engagement scores. Clients commission her when the gender balance of their senior roster needs to change, not when they need an inspirational keynote. She frames inclusion as a commercial discipline. Her core argument, that diversity fails in most companies because it sits with people who lack decision rights and budget, lands credibly with COOs and CEOs as well as CHROs. A corporate operator before a coach: a former European Sales Director responsible for 12 countries and 85 employees, with credentials as a CTI Leadership Coach, NLP Master Practitioner, and qualified Organisational Relationship Systems Coach. She talks to men as well as women. The programme deliberately addresses allyship, micro-aggressions, and the part male leaders play in changing the system, which makes her workable for organisations nervous about polarised DEI framing. Biography highlights Co-founder of Shine (now We Are Shine), launched 2013 with Caroline Whaley. Former European Sales Director with responsibility for 12 countries and 85 employees. Earlier roles at Axel Springer Verlag and Bertelsmann. Programme has worked with thousands of women across more than 75 nationalities and four continents. Named clients include WPP, Rothschild & Co, TikTok, Channel 4, Google, Channel 4, ITV, and EasyJet. Credentialled as a CTI Leadership Coach, Neuro-Linguistic Master Practitioner, and qualified Organisational Relationship Systems Coach. Biography Most diversity work fails on the same fault line. Programmes sit inside HR, measured by sign-up rates and sentiment, while the senior roster keeps reproducing itself. Promotion patterns do not move. Mid-career women leave. The gap between stated values and lived experience widens. Shine, the organisation Anna Baréz-Brown co-founded with Caroline Whaley in 2013, was built to attack that fault line directly. The programme is delivered into companies including WPP, Channel 4, TikTok, Rothschild & Co, and Google, and is measured against retention, promotion, and the gender balance of senior teams. It has worked with thousands of women across more than 75 nationalities and four continents. The credibility behind that work is corporate, not activist. Before launching Shine, Baréz-Brown ran a sales business as European Director with twelve countries and eighty-five staff reporting in, after earlier roles at Axel Springer Verlag and Bertelsmann. She is a CTI Leadership Coach, an NLP Master Practitioner, and a qualified Organisational Relationship Systems Coach. Her argument to senior teams is commercial. Diversity stalls because the responsibility is delegated downward, the investment is underestimated, and the conversation polarises before any system actually changes. Her work treats inclusion as a leadership discipline that involves men and women, allies and sceptics, and the operating decisions of the business itself. Key speaking topics Gender balance in senior leadership Inclusive leadership and allyship Building corporate leadership pipelines Coaching cultures and feedback Personal energy and performance at work Influence, impact, and executive presence Courageous conversations and managing micro-aggressions Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and Heads of D&I designing senior pipeline programmes. CEOs and ExCo sponsors who want gender balance treated as a commercial outcome, not a comms initiative. Leadership development teams running cohort programmes for high-potential women and their managers. Male executives and line managers being asked to act as allies and sponsors in practice. Audience outcomes A clearer view of why most diversity programmes do not move the senior roster, and what does. Language and tools for courageous conversations across difference, including on micro-aggressions. Specific practices for women navigating senior career transitions: stakeholder management, brand, energy, narrative. A framing of inclusion that male leaders can act on, not just endorse. A diagnostic for where their own organisation’s pipeline is leaking and who needs to own the fix.

Why organisations work with Andy Storch He has facilitated talent and leadership programmes for Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, Cisco, Sony, and Tiffany & Co., which means he has tested his career-ownership material against the most demanding corporate L&D functions in the market. He runs the room where his buyers meet each other. The Talent Development Think Tank conference, community, and podcast give him a working view of what CHROs and L&D leaders are actually trying to fix, before they brief a speaker. His thesis is concrete and actionable: career ownership is a learnable practice, not a slogan. Own Your Career Own Your Life breaks it into specific steps employees and managers can apply on Monday. His 2025 follow-up with Mike Kim, Own Your Brand, Own Your Career, gives organisations a practical handle on personal brand as a retention and internal mobility lever, not a LinkedIn exercise. He works equally credibly as a keynote, workshop facilitator, and community host. For talent functions running multi-day events, that flexibility is rare. Biography highlights Author of Own Your Career Own Your Life (2020) and co-author with Mike Kim of Own Your Brand, Own Your Career (2025). Founder and host of the Talent Development Think Tank podcast, conference, and community, sponsored by Advantage Performance Group. Has consulted, taught, or facilitated for Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, State Farm, Red Bull, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, HP, Sony, Cisco, and Tiffany & Co. MBA, USC Marshall School of Business (President of the MBA programme); BS, University of Florida. Host of three podcasts: The Talent Development Hot Seat, Own Your Career, and My NFT Journey. Workshop facilitator for global enterprises since 2011. Biography Career development inside large organisations has become a quiet contract failure. Employees assume their employer will plot the path; employers assume employees will take initiative; the middle is where engagement and retention disappear. Storch built a practice around closing that gap from both sides. His book Own Your Career Own Your Life sets out a step-by-step approach to career ownership for individual contributors and managers. The 2025 follow-up with Mike Kim, Own Your Brand, Own Your Career, extends the argument into personal brand as an internal-mobility and retention lever rather than an external marketing exercise. Both books are direct and operational, not motivational. The proof point most relevant to corporate buyers is who he works with. Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, Cisco, Sony, and Tiffany & Co. have used him to facilitate leadership and talent programmes. He has been running these workshops since 2011, which is what allows the keynote material to land in language a senior L&D function recognises. The Talent Development Think Tank, his podcast, conference, and community, gives him an unusual position in the market. He is not commenting on the talent development field from outside it; he is the convener inside it. For a CHRO or head of L&D, that means the speaker on stage has heard, in private, the same problems they are trying to solve. Key speaking topics Career ownership and employee development Talent development strategy Personal brand and internal mobility Leadership for managers of professionals Employee engagement and retention Future of work and talent trends Ideal for CHROs, heads of L&D, and talent development leaders running enterprise development programmes Annual talent and leadership offsites for managers of professionals Employee resource groups and internal high-potential cohorts Sales and account leadership conferences focused on retention and growth of top performers Audience outcomes A working definition of career ownership that managers and employees can apply to weekly conversations Specific tools to make personal brand work as an internal mobility and retention asset A clearer line between what the employer owes the employee and what the employee owes their own career Language to frame development conversations that does not collapse into performance review template A view of where talent development practice is heading, drawn from a sitting community of CHROs and L&D leaders

Why organisations work with Hayley Mulenda She has been booked into the rooms where retention strategy is set, including Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Unilever’s C-suite under Leena Nair, and Meta MENA’s leadership. Her TEDxLSE talk «The Danger of Being a Role Model» frames a specific argument about authenticity that translates directly into how organisations think about leadership visibility and reverse mentoring. She holds an active operating seat as Brand Board Member at Wagamama, so the inclusion and culture content is informed by board-level decision-making, not consultancy at arm’s length. Her work on the gap between C-suite intent and Gen Z lived experience addresses a problem most leadership teams can name but few can resolve. Her book «The ABCs to Student Success» and her TEDx platform give her a public body of work that buyers can read before booking. Biography highlights TEDxLSE speaker, «The Danger of Being a Role Model» Author, «The ABCs to Student Success» Brand Board Member, Wagamama Keynote and consulting work with Microsoft, Unilever, JP Morgan, Google, Meta MENA, Chanel, Bloomberg Media, Harrods, Clifford Chance, Cabinet Office UK Spoken at Wembley Arena, Oslo Spektrum, and the UK Houses of Parliament Named one of 25 Black entrepreneurs to watch in 2024, The Black Business Show x HSBC Biography The cost of failing to engage a younger workforce is now measured at executive committee level. Retention has become a leadership question rather than an HR one. Hayley Mulenda’s work sits at the point where mental health, inclusion, and generational change converge inside that question. She came to the work through her own experience. After a suicide attempt at 18, she rebuilt her life around the practical mechanics of mental health and self-worth, and turned that into a public body of work. Her TEDxLSE talk, «The Danger of Being a Role Model», argues that organisations and leaders default to curated personas when employees actually need authenticity, and that the difference is what determines trust. Her client list reflects how that argument lands inside large organisations. Microsoft brought her to Redmond. Unilever’s then Chief HR Officer Leena Nair, now CEO of Chanel, has worked with her. Meta MENA, JP Morgan, Bloomberg Media, Clifford Chance, Google, the Cabinet Office, and Teach First have all booked her on briefs covering wellbeing, inclusion, and reverse mentoring. Wagamama appointed her to its brand board. The «ABCs to Student Success» gives her a published framework. The board seat keeps the work close to operating decisions. Together, they explain why she is booked less as a wellbeing speaker and more as a translator between senior leaders and the workforce now reporting to them. Key speaking topics Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace Reverse mentoring and generational engagement Diversity, equity and inclusion Employee retention and the social contract of work Authentic leadership and personal branding Workplace culture across the MENA region Ideal for CHROs and people directors managing retention of Gen Z and millennial talent Inclusion and culture leads building reverse mentoring or ERG programmes Executive teams reviewing employee engagement and wellbeing strategy Conferences and offsites where leadership wants a credible voice on mental health rather than a generic one Audience outcomes A working language for the difference between leader visibility and leader authenticity, and why one drives engagement and the other does not A direct view of what younger employees actually want from senior leaders A reframing of mental health from a wellbeing programme into a retention lever Practical reference points for designing reverse mentoring that produces decisions, not optics

Why organisations work with Matt Havens He treats generational friction as a leadership design problem, not a personality clash, which gives HR and operations leaders something they can act on rather than another set of demographic slides. His Simplicity framework is built from inside a Fortune 50 operating environment, not from a consultancy deck, so the examples land with line managers who run contact centres, branches, and field teams. The “4 Human Truths” content reframes engagement around what employees of every age actually share, which is useful for organisations stuck rotating perks instead of fixing leadership behaviour. He carries a room. Comedy-club upbringing translates into a delivery style that holds attention through a full keynote, which matters for late-day conference slots and large internal kickoffs. Deployable across very different audience profiles, with named repeat clients including Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International. Biography highlights Fourteen years in Fortune 50 leadership across finance, sales, and customer service, with responsibility for contact centres in five US locations. Creator of the Simplicity framework for leading multigenerational teams and reducing organisational complexity. Author of the “Make Your Business Human: The 4 Human Truths” keynote on engagement and culture. Repeat keynote speaker for organisations including Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International. Grew up backstage in comedy clubs alongside a stand-up comedian father; uses that craft to deliver leadership content with sustained audience energy. Programmes are delivered in person and virtually, working across corporate, association, and franchise audiences. Biography Five generations now sit on the same org chart, and most leadership systems were not built for that reality. Engagement programmes default to perks. Generational training defaults to stereotypes. Leaders end up managing labels rather than people, and the friction shows up in attrition data long before anyone names it. Matt Havens works that problem from inside the operating side of an organisation. Fourteen years of Fortune 50 leadership across finance, sales, and customer service, including responsibility for contact centres in five US locations, gave him a working view of where complexity actually accumulates: in handovers, in jargon, in well-meaning processes that no one will defend if pressed. His Simplicity framework is the response. It asks leaders to strip away the layers that make modern work harder than it needs to be, and to manage multigenerational teams through what people share rather than how they differ. The companion “4 Human Truths” content reframes engagement around the few fundamentals that hold across age, tenure, and function. The delivery is the second half of the proposition. Havens grew up in comedy-club green rooms with a stand-up comedian father, and he uses that craft to keep a room with him through serious leadership content. Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International have brought him back for that reason: the message lands, and the audience remembers it on Monday. Key speaking topics Multigenerational workplace leadership Employee engagement and culture Simplicity in leadership and operations Talent attraction and retention Workplace humour and human connection Customer-facing team leadership Ideal for CHROs and heads of culture working on cross-generational engagement Operations and customer service leaders running large frontline teams Conference programmers needing a humour-led, high-energy main-stage keynote on people and culture Sales and franchise leadership audiences at annual kickoffs Audience outcomes A working definition of generational friction as a leadership design issue, with practical levers managers can pull The Simplicity framework as a checklist for stripping unnecessary complexity out of team operations The 4 Human Truths as a shared engagement vocabulary across a multigenerational workforce Renewed energy and a memorable shared reference point for the rest of the offsite or conference

Why organisations work with Jason Lauritsen He turns the manager-employee relationship into a working model, not a slogan, through The Check-In Method, a named and published approach leaders can install the week after the keynote. His research seat at Quantum Workplace gave him visibility across thousands of employers and millions of engagement responses, which grounds every claim in pattern data rather than anecdote. His book Unlocking High Performance reframes performance management as a relationship discipline, endorsed by Daniel H. Pink, and is used by HR leaders as a practical redesign guide. He speaks fluently to both the CHRO and the frontline manager, which is rare. The same session lands with executives rethinking policy and with line leaders rethinking their next one-to-one. He brings the credibility of an operator who has run the system from both sides: corporate HR leadership where he helped double revenue per employee and halve turnover, and now CEO of Connected Performance Group, advising executive teams on the same problem at the source. Biography highlights CEO of Connected Performance Group, advising CEOs and executive teams on the performance systems that turn strategy into execution. Creator of the Connected Performance System, a framework for leadership clarity, alignment, and performance enablement, with original research presented at Workhuman Live Orlando 2026. Author of Unlocking High Performance (Kogan Page, 2018), a performance-management redesign endorsed by Daniel H. Pink. Co-author with Joe Gerstandt of Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships. As a corporate executive, helped double revenue per employee while cutting employee turnover in half. Former Director of Best Places to Work at Quantum Workplace, leading research across thousands of participating organisations. Biography Engagement has been one of the most measured aspects of corporate life for two decades, and it has barely moved. The data is rich, the pulse surveys run quarterly, and most managers still cannot describe what actually changes a disengaged employee’s trajectory. That gap between measurement and behaviour is the terrain Jason Lauritsen works in. Earlier in his career, as a corporate executive, he helped double revenue per employee while cutting turnover in half. He then led the research team for the Best Places to Work programme at Quantum Workplace, which gave him a cross-sectional view of engagement data across thousands of employers. The conclusion he draws from both sides is direct: employees do not experience work as a contract or a process, they experience it as a relationship, and they leave when the relationship fails. That thesis runs through two books. Unlocking High Performance (Kogan Page, 2018) argues that performance management collapses when it is built as a compliance process and works when it is built around conversation. Social Gravity, co-authored with Joe Gerstandt, maps the laws that govern how workplace relationships actually form. The Check-In Method, the framework he is best known for, translates the relationship argument into the specific moments managers can do differently on a Monday morning. As CEO of Connected Performance Group, his current work goes one layer up. The Connected Performance System treats connection as the operating mechanism through which strategy turns into execution, and locates the leadership, cultural, and operational conditions that strengthen or erode it. Cited across Forbes, Fast Company, HR Executive, Talent Management, and SHRM, his sessions give CHROs and executive teams a named system to install, not just an argument to agree with. Key speaking topics Employee engagement Connection as a performance driver Performance management redesign The manager-employee relationship Employee experience Talent retention Workplace culture Ideal for CHROs and VPs of People rethinking engagement or performance strategy HR and people-team leaders preparing a manager-effectiveness programme Executive teams whose engagement scores have plateaued and whose attrition is climbing Line manager audiences at leadership summits, where the goal is behaviour change, not theory Audience outcomes A clear model for treating the manager-employee bond as a relationship, with the specific manager behaviours that sustain it. The Check-In Method as an installable practice, including the questions managers can use in their next one-to-one. A diagnosis for why performance management processes fail, and what to redesign rather than patch. A sharper read of engagement data, so leaders stop optimising scores and start changing the experience behind them. Language HR and line leaders can share, which closes the gap between policy intent and what employees actually feel.