Talent Retention Strategies

Why organisations work with Jeannie Walters She gives operators a working method, not a slogan: the CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks turn customer-experience strategy into something a leadership team can run, not just endorse. She translates CX from a contact-centre function into a board-level commercial lever, framed around retention, loyalty, and the cost of reactive service. The dual credential set (CCXP and CSP) is unusual: she is certified in the discipline she speaks on and in the craft of speaking itself, which means content holds up under scrutiny from CX practitioners. A 2026 book with Mission Driven Press and Simon and Schuster distribution gives her thesis a citable spine, with named tools (CX Mission Statement, CX Success Blueprint, Four Cs of CX Culture) leaders can take back into the business. Reach into operating teams runs deeper than most keynote speakers: more than 500,000 LinkedIn Learning participants, plus the Experience Action podcast, mean her language is already inside many client organisations before she arrives. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, a customer experience consultancy founded in 2009. Author of “Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations” (Mission Driven Press, April 2026). Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and charter member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and Professional Member of the National Speakers Association. Host of the Experience Action podcast, recognised by CX Network among its leading CX podcasts. LinkedIn Learning instructor whose courses have reached more than 500,000 learners; named clients include Verizon, Siemens, GitLab, PayPal, BASF, Comcast, Allstate, and SAP Litmos. Biography Most companies that say they are customer-centric are not. They are service-centric, organised to absorb complaints, route tickets and react to survey scores. The decisions that actually shape loyalty, retention and willingness to pay sit upstream, in product, operations and leadership, and that is the gap Jeannie Walters has spent two decades closing. She is the founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, the consultancy she launched in 2009 to help organisations design customer experience as a deliberate discipline rather than a reactive function. Her clients include Verizon, Siemens, GitLab, PayPal, BASF, Comcast, Allstate and SAP Litmos, and the work tends to focus on the same problem: leadership intent that does not survive contact with the operating model. Her 2026 book, “Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations”, published by Mission Driven Press with Simon and Schuster distribution, sets out the thesis. CX is treated as a business discipline with named tools, including a CX Mission Statement, a CX Success Blueprint, and the Four Cs of CX Culture, that give leadership teams something to run rather than something to admire. Her CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks structure the operating side of that work. Credentials reinforce the practice. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and a charter member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, a Certified Speaking Professional, and a LinkedIn Learning instructor whose courses have reached more than 500,000 learners. The Experience Action podcast, named by CX Network among its top CX podcasts, extends her work into the day-to-day of leaders trying to put it into effect. Key speaking topics Customer experience strategy Customer loyalty and retention Proactive versus reactive customer experience Customer journey design Employee experience and CX alignment CX measurement and accountability AI in customer experience Ideal for Chief Customer Officers, Chief Experience Officers and CX leadership functions CMOs and Chief Revenue Officers responsible for retention and lifetime value Heads of operations and service in B2C and B2B businesses where churn is a board issue Senior leadership teams trying to convert customer-centric language into operating discipline Audience outcomes A working definition of customer experience as a commercial discipline, separate from customer service. A method for spotting where the journey is leaking value, drawn from the CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks. A clearer link between CX investment and the metrics finance and the board care about: retention, lifetime value, churn cost. A practical view of how AI changes CX expectations, and where automation should and should not enter the journey. Language and tools (CX Mission Statement, CX Success Blueprint, Four Cs of CX Culture) leaders can take into the next operating review.

Why organisations work with Tim Ringo A practitioner thesis on productivity, not a survey of the field. Solving the Productivity Puzzle won the HR & Management category at the Business Book Awards because it sets out a specific operating model for connecting engagement, performance and learning, rather than describing the problem. Three decades inside the firms that built the modern HR function: Accenture, IBM and SAP SuccessFactors, including global leadership of IBM’s 1,500-strong Human Capital Management consulting practice and EMEA leadership at SAP SuccessFactors. A rare combination of HR strategy and workforce analytics credentials, evidenced by Calculating Success, his Harvard Business Review Press book on workforce analytics co-authored with Carl Hoffmann and Eric Lesser. Recognised peer authority: named to HR Magazine’s Most Influential HR Thinkers list in 2022, alongside the people the audience is reading. A working point of view on AI in the workplace from someone who has run global HR technology programmes, not a commentator new to the topic. Biography highlights Named to HR Magazine’s HR Most Influential Thinkers, 2022. Author, Solving the Productivity Puzzle (Kogan Page); Category Winner, HR & Management, Business Book Awards. Co-author, Calculating Success (Harvard Business Review Press), on workforce analytics. Former Vice President and Global Leader, IBM Human Capital Management consulting practice. Former Vice President for EMEA, SAP SuccessFactors. Chartered Fellow of the CIPD; BSc, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University. Biography Most large organisations now spend more on HR technology, engagement programmes and learning platforms than at any point in their history. Productivity has not followed. Tim Ringo’s work begins where that gap sits, and treats it as a design problem inside the people function rather than a cultural mood. His 2020 book Solving the Productivity Puzzle, published by Kogan Page, won the HR & Management category at the Business Book Awards. The argument is operational: engagement, performance management and learning have to be wired together, and supported by analytics, before any productivity number moves. His earlier book with Carl Hoffmann and Eric Lesser, Calculating Success, was published by Harvard Business Review Press and helped to define what serious workforce analytics looks like inside an enterprise. The credibility behind the work is built over three decades. Ringo led IBM’s global Human Capital Management consulting practice, with more than 1,500 consultants worldwide, ran SAP SuccessFactors HR advisory across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and spent sixteen years as an executive partner in Accenture’s Human Performance service line. He is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD and was named to HR Magazine’s Most Influential HR Thinkers list in 2022. For senior HR audiences, that mix is unusual. Ringo can move from a board conversation about AI in the workforce to a working session on engagement metrics or HR technology investment, and bring the same operating language to both. His view on generative AI at work is a practitioner’s view, formed inside the systems that the rest of the function relies on. Key speaking topics Workforce productivity and engagement Digital HR transformation Workforce analytics Generative AI in the workplace Employee experience and retention Workforce wellbeing strategy HR technology investment Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and HR directors leading productivity, engagement or HR technology agendas Executive teams reviewing return on HR technology and workforce analytics investment HR leadership conferences, CHRO summits and people analytics events Boards considering the workforce implications of generative AI Audience outcomes A clearer view of where productivity is actually lost inside the organisation, and which HR levers move it. A working model for connecting engagement, performance and learning to business outcomes. A practical sense of what good workforce analytics looks like, and what most organisations are still missing. An informed perspective on how to introduce generative AI to the workforce without losing trust or governance.

Why organisations work with Adam Kingl A decade-plus of original research into how Generation Y expects to work and be led, conducted while at London Business School and Duke Corporate Education, now applied to advising boards on talent and culture strategy. Author of two books from mainstream business publishers (Next Generation Leadership with HarperCollins, Sparking Success with Kogan Page), the second shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2024 in the Smart Thinking category. Primary research inside the creative industries (Carnegie Hall, Disney Imagineering, Broadway theatre, the writers’ room of Friends) translated into leadership practice for companies including Pixar, Panasonic, Bosch and Netflix. Very few leadership speakers work from that source base. Adjunct teaching at UCL School of Management, Hult Ashridge, Imperial College Business School and the Møller Institute at Churchill College, Cambridge. These appointments come through competitive academic review and carry live executive programme responsibility. A decade as Executive Director of Thought Leadership at London Business School and Regional Managing Director (Europe) at Duke Corporate Education. He has designed and run executive development at scale, which shapes how he reads a boardroom. Biography highlights Author of Next Generation Leadership (HarperCollins, 2020) and Sparking Success (Kogan Page, 2023), the second shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2024 in the Smart Thinking category Former Executive Director of Thought Leadership and Learning Solutions at London Business School (nearly a decade in post) Former Regional Managing Director (Europe) at Duke Corporate Education, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University Adjunct Faculty at UCL School of Management, Hult Ashridge International Business School and Imperial College Business School Associate of the Møller Institute at Churchill College, University of Cambridge Contributor and interviewee for the Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, The Guardian, Fast Company and The Sunday Times Biography 80% of CEOs name innovation and creativity among their top three priorities. In the same surveyed organisations, 94% of employees rate their company as poor at both. That gap, between what executives say matters and what their organisations actually produce, is the starting point for most of Adam Kingl’s work. Kingl spent nearly a decade as Executive Director of Thought Leadership at London Business School, then led Duke Corporate Education’s European business as Regional Managing Director. He now teaches at UCL School of Management, Hult Ashridge, Imperial College Business School and the Møller Institute at Churchill College, Cambridge. His material is built and tested inside those programmes before it reaches any commercial audience. Next Generation Leadership (HarperCollins, 2020) grew out of a decade of original research into how Generation Y expects to work and be led. It treats generational change as a management design problem. Kingl’s argument is that the old playbook, built on hierarchy and productivity, produces the disengagement and attrition the same playbook is then used to diagnose. Sparking Success (Kogan Page, 2023), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards in the Smart Thinking category, goes inside the arts. Carnegie Hall, Disney Imagineering, Broadway theatre and the writers’ room of Friends are interviewed on how they produce creative output under commercial pressure. Those habits are then mapped into corporate practice at Pixar, Bosch, Panasonic and Netflix. His advisory work spans the BBC, BP, Disney, HSBC, LVMH, Shell and the European Central Bank. Key speaking topics Generational paradigms in leadership Creativity and creative mindset in business Culture and talent strategy Future of work Leadership and management innovation Executive education and capability building Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers reshaping leadership development for a multigenerational workforce CEOs and executive committees where stated innovation and engagement ambitions are outrunning the culture and talent practices meant to deliver them Boards and executive education programmes investing in next-generation leadership capability Learning and development leaders designing curricula for leadership at mid-career and senior level Audience outcomes A sharper diagnostic for why stated priorities on innovation and engagement keep failing to show up in organisational behaviour A set of creative practices borrowed from arts organisations (including how Pixar, Disney Imagineering and the Friends writers’ room actually work) and a route to adopting them in a corporate setting A clearer read on what younger talent actually expects from work, and which of those expectations are non-negotiable for retention A vocabulary for talking about generational differences in the workplace that avoids the usual folklore about “millennials” and “Gen Z”

Why organisations work with Brant Menswar A defined methodology, Black Sheep Values, that gives leaders a shared language for the five values their organisation will not trade away under pressure. Behavioural-science grounding through an eCornell Psychology of Leadership certification, applied to the everyday mechanics of trust, vulnerability and team performance. Author of two trade-published books on the same thesis: Black Sheep (Page Two, 2020) and Designing Momentum (Wiley, 2025), giving the work a documented intellectual spine rather than a slide deck. A 20-year career as a recording artist before the speaking work, which means a keynote that lands as a live performance, not a talk read off a screen. Track record inside large, brand-sensitive organisations including Netflix, Verizon, Microsoft, ESPN and Hilton, where the culture stakes are high and the audience is sceptical of motivational content. Biography highlights Author, Black Sheep: Unleash the Extraordinary, Awe-Inspiring, Undiscovered You (Page Two, 2020). Author, Designing Momentum: A Big Goal Blueprint for Transforming Everyday Moments into Massive Success (Wiley, 2025). Certified in Psychology of Leadership, eCornell, Cornell University. Founder and CEO of Black Sheep Foundry; previously founder of Rock Star Impact and partner at Banding People Together. Host of Just a Moment, a podcast distributed by SURROUND Podcast Network. Keynote work delivered for organisations including Netflix, Verizon, Microsoft, ESPN, Hilton, Anthem, Sony Pictures and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Biography Most companies can recite their stated values. Far fewer can name the values their teams actually use when a project slips, a leader leaves or a quarter goes sideways. That gap is the working territory of Brant Menswar’s keynote practice and the through-line of his two books. The methodology has a name and a structure. Black Sheep Values are the five non-negotiable values that, in Menswar’s framing, sit underneath every meaningful decision a person or a team makes. The argument is that culture only holds when those values are explicit, shared, and used as a decision filter, rather than printed on a wall poster. Black Sheep (Page Two, 2020) introduced the framework. Designing Momentum (Wiley, 2025) applies it to how teams convert ordinary moments into compounding progress. The credentials behind the work are concrete. Menswar holds a Psychology of Leadership certification from eCornell at Cornell University, and built the consulting practice through Banding People Together and Rock Star Impact before founding Black Sheep Foundry in 2023. The client list, including Netflix, Verizon, Microsoft, ESPN, Hilton, Anthem, Sony Pictures and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, sits inside industries where culture programmes are routinely cynical, and where a generic motivational keynote does not survive the room. What separates the delivery from a standard culture talk is the craft of the room itself. Menswar spent twenty years as a recording artist before the keynote work, and the live performance discipline shows: pacing, music, structure, and a refusal to default to slide-driven exposition. The result is a session leadership teams can recall in detail months later, which is the only useful test of a culture keynote. Key speaking topics Values-based culture and the Black Sheep Values methodology Connection, trust and team vulnerability Employee engagement and retention through values alignment Leading change without losing the workforce Personal and team resilience under pressure Authenticity and identity in professional life Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers rebuilding culture after restructure, merger or rapid growth Sales, customer and client-facing leadership teams whose performance depends on trust All-employee or all-leader gatherings where the brief is engagement and connection, not strategy content Organisations using offsites to reset team norms after a period of fatigue or turnover Audience outcomes A method for naming the five non-negotiable values a team will not trade away A clearer read on why specific cultural commitments are failing in the organisation today Language and a shared frame leaders can use back at work, not just in the room A more honest conversation about trust, vulnerability and what teams owe each other

Why organisations work with Monica McCoy She built her practice from inside a Fortune 100 procurement and strategy function, not from advocacy. Her recommendations work because they account for how large companies actually source. Her trademarked Pitch University and Global Supplier Diversity Conference are operating programmes with named corporate partners, including Microsoft, Porsche, and Santander, not concepts. She works upstream of typical DEI conversations, on the pipeline of founders that procurement teams can credibly contract with, which is where most inclusion strategies break down. Her non-profit Pivot Purposefully extends the same discipline to formerly incarcerated women founders, giving her a defensible position on inclusion that goes beyond corporate audiences. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Monica Motivates, LLC (2017 to present); supports 38 Fortune 500 clients on supplier diversity and inclusion delivery Fifteen years at The Coca-Cola Company, most recently Acting Global Director of Strategy and Innovation, McDonald’s Division Creator of Pitch University, the Annual Global Supplier Diversity Conference, and a Microsoft-backed accelerator for commercial real estate founders Founder, Pivot Purposefully, non-profit supporting formerly incarcerated women entrepreneurs Recognitions include American Express Founder of Change (2020), Porsche Driven Women (2021), Iconic Women Creating a Better World for All (Women’s Economic Forum), YWCA Corporate Woman of Achievement (2015) BA Psychology, Emory University; Oxford College Alumni Board Biography Most corporate inclusion programmes fail at the seam between policy and procurement. The policy gets signed. The procurement function keeps sourcing from the same qualified vendor pool. The pipeline of underrepresented founders never reaches contract size. This is the gap Monica McCoy spent fifteen years observing from inside The Coca-Cola Company, and the one her firm now exists to close. Monica Motivates, founded in 2017, works with 38 Fortune 500 clients, including Microsoft, Porsche, and Santander, on the practical mechanics of bringing underrepresented founders into corporate supply chains. The firm’s programmes are operating, not conceptual. Pitch University trains founders for the specific pitch standards large companies use. The Annual Global Supplier Diversity Conference puts buyers and suppliers in the same room at scale. A Microsoft-backed accelerator focuses on commercial real estate, where founder access has historically been narrowest. The corporate credentials sit underneath this work. McCoy was Acting Global Director of Strategy and Innovation for the McDonald’s Division at Coca-Cola, a role that gave her direct exposure to how a Fortune 100 firm sources, qualifies, and contracts at scale. That experience is what makes her programmes legible to procurement leaders, not just to inclusion officers. Her non-profit, Pivot Purposefully, applies the same discipline to a harder constituency, formerly incarcerated women founding businesses. Recognition from the Women’s Economic Forum, American Express, Porsche, and the YWCA tracks the same throughline: inclusion treated as a delivery problem. Key speaking topics Supplier diversity programme design Founder pipeline and access for underrepresented entrepreneurs Inclusion as procurement capability Entrepreneurial pitch and storytelling discipline Corporate strategy and innovation at Fortune 100 scale Personal brand and executive presence for senior women Ideal for CHROs, chief diversity officers, and heads of supplier diversity at large corporates Procurement and category leaders responsible for diverse sourcing targets Founder networks and accelerator audiences focused on underrepresented entrepreneurs Senior women’s leadership programmes inside Fortune 500 organisations Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion policy stalls inside procurement and category management Specific programme structures that have moved underrepresented founders into Fortune 500 supply chains A defensible position on inclusion grounded in operating mechanics, not advocacy framing Practical pitch and access standards founders need to clear to win corporate contracts

Why organisations work with Andy Lopata He reframes networking as a leadership discipline. The argument lands with executives who have dismissed the topic as junior or transactional, and gives them a structured way to think about who supports them, how, and why. The Relationship Matrix gives leaders a tangible way to audit their professional support system, identify where it is thin, and decide where to invest. Few speakers in this space work at that level of operational specificity. His mentoring work, anchored in The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring co-authored with Dr Ruth Gotian of Weill Cornell, gives organisations a serious reference point for designing mentoring programmes that retain senior talent. Twenty-five years inside the topic, recognition from the Financial Times and Forbes, and a 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award shortlist place him in a small group of speakers who have built genuine institutional credibility on professional relationships. He works with the cultural problem behind the leadership one: why senior people will not ask for help, and what it costs the organisation when they do not. Biography highlights Author of six books, including Connected Leadership (2020) and The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring (Pearson, 2024, with Dr Ruth Gotian). Shortlisted for the 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award. Two-time board member and former President of the Fellows Community of the Professional Speaking Association UK and Ireland; holder of the PSAE, the PSA’s Hall of Fame distinction. Fellow of the Learning and Performance Institute; member of the Association of Business Mentors and the Meetings Industry Association. Contributor to Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today; host of The Connected Leadership Podcast. Clients include PayPal, Google, Harrods, BBC, HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline, Allen and Overy, Saïd Business School and Brother International Europe. Biography Most senior leaders rise on technical and commercial credibility, then hit a level where the job is mostly relational. They under-invest in mentors, hesitate to ask for help, and end up isolated at exactly the point where their decisions carry the most weight. That gap is what Lopata’s work addresses. For more than twenty-five years he has worked on professional relationships as an executive capability rather than a soft skill. The Financial Times has called him one of Europe’s leading business networking strategists; Forbes has described him as a true master of networking. The label undersells the work. His Relationship Matrix gives leaders a structured way to audit who supports them, where the gaps are, and where to invest. Frameworks like the Seven Stages of Professional Relationships and The Influence Wheel extend that work into stakeholder mapping, influence and senior mentoring practice. His books map the territory in detail. Connected Leadership argues that executive success is built on a deliberate web of relationships, and was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards in 2021. The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, co-authored with Dr Ruth Gotian of Weill Cornell Medicine in 2024, gives organisations a reference text for treating mentoring as a strategic retention and development tool. The book was a runner-up for Leadership Book of the Year at the 2024 Leadership Awards. The institutional weight follows the work. He is a former President of the Fellows Community of the Professional Speaking Association UK and Ireland and holds its PSAE Hall of Fame distinction. He was shortlisted for the 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award, contributes to Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today, and has worked with PayPal, Google, HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline, the BBC and Saïd Business School on the same underlying problem: how senior people stop performing in isolation and start leading through the relationships around them. Key speaking topics Professional relationships as a leadership capability Mentoring strategy and programme design Asking for help and the cost of not asking Vulnerable leadership Referral and influence networks Connected leadership and executive support systems Psychological safety and speaking up at senior level Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and partners moving into senior leadership roles where the work becomes relational CHROs and learning leaders designing mentoring, succession and retention programmes Professional services and partner-track populations where business development depends on relationship quality Sales leaders rebuilding referral networks and account relationships Audience outcomes A clear framework, the Relationship Matrix, for auditing the professional support system around a senior role A different language for mentoring as a strategic asset rather than a benefit programme Specific shifts in how leaders approach asking for help, and why most do not A more honest read on where executive isolation is costing the organisation in retention, succession and decision quality Practical adjustments to how teams use referrals, networks and senior relationships in commercial contexts

Why organisations work with Rich Diviney He brings a published, named framework, the 25 Attributes, drawn from designing and running selection for one of the most demanding assessment processes in the world. Senior teams leave with a vocabulary for talent decisions that does not collapse under pressure. He separates skills from attributes in a way that changes how boards and executive teams think about hiring, succession, and team composition. Skills tell you what someone has done; attributes tell you how they will behave when the script breaks. He has translated SEAL selection science into operating practice for Google, McKinsey, American Airlines, the San Francisco 49ers, McLaren, Adobe, Ernst & Young, Zoom, Bank of America, Lexus, and Deloitte. The frameworks have been stress-tested in commercial environments, not just military ones. His second book, Masters of Uncertainty (Amplify, 2025), gives leaders a method for performing through chaos rather than recovering from it. The argument moves the conversation from resilience as recovery to composure as a deliberate, trainable capability. Biography highlights Retired Navy SEAL commander with more than 20 years of service and 13+ overseas deployments, 11 to Iraq and Afghanistan. Officer in charge of selection, assessment, and training for a specialized SEAL command. Led the creation of the SEALs’ “Mind Gym” for cognitive performance training in high-stress environments. Author of The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance (Random House, 2021), a bestselling book. Author of Masters of Uncertainty: The Navy SEAL Way to Turn Stress into Success for You and Your Team (Amplify Publishing, 2025). Featured in McKinsey’s “Author Talks” series; founder and CEO of The Attributes Inc. Biography Selection is where most organisations get talent decisions wrong. The candidates with the cleanest resumes wash out under stress; the ones who looked unremarkable on paper hold the team together when the plan falls apart. Rich Diviney spent the back half of his Navy career running the selection, assessment, and training pipeline for a specialized SEAL command, watching that pattern repeat at the top of one of the most demanding evaluation systems in the world. The framework he built from that work is now in two books and a consulting practice. The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance (Random House, 2021) names the innate traits, things like adaptability, cunning, narcissism, courage, that predict performance when skills run out. Masters of Uncertainty (Amplify, 2025) extends the argument into a method for staying composed and decisive when conditions are chaotic. Both treat performance as something you can engineer in advance through how you select and develop people, not something you hope shows up on the day. The substance has translated. Since leaving the Navy in 2017, Diviney has worked with Google, McKinsey, American Airlines, the San Francisco 49ers, McLaren, Adobe, Ernst & Young, Zoom, Bank of America, Lexus, and Deloitte. He was featured in McKinsey’s “Author Talks” series on the thesis that attributes, not skills, decide whether someone makes the cut. The pattern across his clients is consistent: they are organisations whose top teams operate at the edge of their capacity and need a sharper way to choose, build, and lead the people who get sent in first. What makes him useful in a boardroom is not the SEAL biography. It is that he has a tested vocabulary for the part of leadership most frameworks gloss over: how human beings actually behave when certainty disappears. Key speaking topics The Attributes framework for individual and team performance Selection, assessment, and team composition Performing under uncertainty and stress High-performing team dynamics Trust as an operating discipline Leadership in elite and high-pressure environments Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and executive teams responsible for performance through volatile conditions. CHROs and talent leaders rethinking selection, succession, and team composition. Boards and senior leadership offsites focused on resilience, composure, and decision-making under pressure. High-stakes operating teams in financial services, professional services, sport, aviation, and defence-adjacent industries. Audience outcomes A working distinction between skills and attributes that changes how leaders evaluate talent. A vocabulary of 25 named attributes leaders can use immediately in selection, succession, and team-building conversations. A method for staying composed and decisive in conditions where the plan has stopped working. A clearer view of what trust actually consists of inside a high-performing team, and how to build it deliberately. A reframe of resilience: from recovery after shock to performance through it.

Why organisations work with Dan Hunt He has built the performance engine, not just coached inside one. The GB women’s endurance programme he took over in 2005 went from uncompetitive to delivering Olympic medals in under three years. His career is a rare controlled experiment in whether performance infrastructure transfers. He has run it in track cycling, professional road cycling at Team Sky, Premier League academy football, Olympic snow sports, and now GB Surfing. Q Division, the innovation unit he set up at British Ski and Snowboard, is a concrete example of how a small, properly scoped R and D function finds gains a larger organisation would miss. He speaks with specific case material from environments where the scoreboard is public and unforgiving, which is closer to the conditions a senior leadership team actually operates in than most sport-to-business framing allows. Biography highlights Led the turnaround of the Great Britain women’s endurance cycling programme from 2005, contributing to Olympic medals at Beijing 2008. Coached the GB men’s team pursuit to Olympic gold at London 2012. Appointed Sports Director at Team Sky for the 2013 season, during the period of consecutive Tour de France wins. Head of Elite Performance at the Premier League, working on academy performance systems. Performance Director at British Ski and Snowboard across alpine, freestyle, snowboard, cross-country, ski jumping, speed skiing and telemark; founded Q Division, the federation’s innovation unit. Executive Performance Director of GB Surfing from 2023. Biography Most organisations can point to a period of good results. Far fewer can explain why those results held, or why they did not. The distinction matters because the job of a senior leader is rarely to produce a single peak. It is to build the thing that produces peaks repeatedly. That is the problem Hunt has spent his career on. In 2005 he took over a Great Britain women’s endurance cycling programme that was not competitive, and inside three years it was delivering Olympic medals. He then switched to the men’s team pursuit and the group won gold at London 2012. The common thread across both was not a single charismatic intervention. It was an explicit, transferable system for how talent, coaching, data and decision rights fit together. Team Sky appointed him Sports Director for the 2013 season, a period that coincided with consecutive Tour de France wins. He went on to run elite performance at the Premier League, working on academy-stage talent systems, and then joined British Ski and Snowboard as Performance Director. There he built Q Division, a small innovation unit focused on the kind of marginal gains that a federation structure usually cannot produce on its own. In 2023 he took on the Executive Performance Director role at GB Surfing, now building the same architecture in a sport with almost no existing elite infrastructure in Britain. What makes Hunt useful in a boardroom is not a stock set of sport analogies. It is that he has rebuilt performance systems in five very different contexts, and can be specific about what travels, what does not, and why senior teams routinely misread the difference. Key speaking topics High-performance systems design Leadership under competitive pressure Talent pathways and academy development Culture change in medal-winning environments Marginal gains and performance innovation units Coaching teams through succession and reinvention Transfer of elite-sport practice to business leadership Ideal for CEO and board offsites framing a multi-year performance or culture reset CHROs and talent leads rebuilding pathways, academies, or internal development systems Leadership teams under acute competitive pressure where results are public Transformation leads accountable for sustained, not one-off, performance uplift Audience outcomes A sharper distinction between one-off results and a system that produces them repeatedly Specific case material from five elite programmes, not generic sport-to-business analogy A clearer view of how small innovation units earn their keep inside a larger organisation A working mental model for the handover points where high-performance cultures most often break

Why organisations work with Laura Brown She runs the room. Six years at the helm of InStyle and a long-form interview track record from Harper’s Bazaar mean she can take a stage with a CEO, a celebrity, or a junior employee and get a real answer in front of a live audience. Her book with Kristina O’Neill, “All the Cool Girls Get Fired,” gives her a specific, named platform on what happens to senior women after a high-profile exit, which is rare content for a corporate stage. The Ladies First podcast has put her in conversation with hundreds of accomplished women across entertainment, business, and politics, which translates directly into informed moderation of women’s leadership panels and ERG events. An Australian Fashion Laureate for Lifetime Achievement and a long media career give her the standing to share a panel with founders, executives, and public figures without being out of place. Biography highlights Editor-in-Chief, InStyle, 2016 to 2022, leading print, digital, and 13 international editions. Eleven years at Harper’s Bazaar in features, special projects, and executive editor roles. Earlier roles as Senior Editor at W and Articles Director at Details. Host and creator of the “Ladies First with Laura Brown” podcast, launched at InStyle in December 2020. Co-author with Kristina O’Neill of “All the Cool Girls Get Fired” (Simon and Schuster, October 2025). Australian Fashion Laureate for Lifetime Achievement, 2019. Founder of LB Media and Chair of the Creative Council of (RED). Board member, Fashion Trust U.S. Biography The next chapter for senior women rarely arrives on schedule. Restructures and sudden exits now reach the most visible jobs in publishing, media, and corporate life, and the recovery script is unwritten. Laura Brown built her platform inside that gap. After eleven years at Harper’s Bazaar covering features, special projects, and executive editorial work, Brown took over InStyle in 2016 and ran the brand across print, digital, and thirteen international editions until early 2022. The “Ladies First with Laura Brown” podcast, launched at InStyle in December 2020, became the long-form home for her interviews with women across entertainment, business, and activism. The 2025 book “All the Cool Girls Get Fired,” co-authored with Kristina O’Neill and published by Simon and Schuster, turned that work into a direct argument: high-profile firings happen to capable people, and reinvention is a craft, not a consolation prize. Industry recognition includes the Australian Fashion Laureate for Lifetime Achievement in 2019. She now runs LB Media, chairs the Creative Council of (RED), and sits on the board of Fashion Trust U.S. Audiences book her for what she still does best on a stage: interview, moderate, and host candid conversation with the people in the room. Key speaking topics Women’s leadership and advancement Career reinvention after a senior exit Media, publishing, and the editor’s craft On-stage interviewing and event hosting Inclusion and representation in consumer brands Building a personal platform in a fragmented media landscape Ideal for CHRO and DEI leads programming women’s leadership and ERG events Conference organisers seeking a moderator or interviewer for a marquee session Brand and marketing leaders running consumer-facing fireside chats Executive coaching cohorts focused on senior women navigating career transitions Audience outcomes A clearer view of what reinvention looks like for senior women after an unwanted exit Practical perspective on building a public platform without an institution behind you Honest reference points from inside global media on inclusion, representation, and brand voice A live conversation that lands with real answers, not rehearsed talking points

Why organisations work with Michael D. Levitt He brings both sides of the table: a senior finance and operations background overseeing budgets above USD 2 billion, plus formal CBT and NLP therapist credentials. Few burnout voices have both. His work is grounded in a documented personal collapse and recovery, the 369 days that produced his book of the same name. It gives executives permission to talk about pressure without performing resilience. He is recognised by Thinkers360 in the Top 100 Global Thought Leaders across Culture, HR, Management, Change Management, and Health and Wellness, with Top 20 standing on Culture. He writes regularly for CEOWORLD Magazine and Thrive Global, so the frameworks audiences hear on stage are road-tested in print with senior business readers. He frames burnout as an operating risk, not a wellbeing topic, which lands with CHROs, CFOs, and operators who need a business case before they fund a culture intervention. Biography highlights Founder and Chief Burnout Officer, Breakfast Leadership Network (San Diego and Toronto). Host, Breakfast Leadership Show, recognised by Thinkers360 as a Top 20 Global Thought Leadership podcast. Author of Burnout Proof, 369 Days: How To Survive A Year of Worst-Case Scenarios, and Pre-Emptive Strike Leadership. Opinion columnist at CEOWORLD Magazine; contributor at Thrive Global. Certified NLP and CBT therapist. Former CFO and CIO with budget responsibility across healthcare and corporate sectors exceeding USD 2 billion. Biography Burnout shows up on the P and L before it shows up in an engagement survey. It surfaces as turnover, missed targets, sick days, quiet quitting, and the slow disengagement of senior people who used to carry the room. Levitt’s work starts from that operating reality. His own story is the through-line. Across 369 days during the financial crisis he had a heart attack, lost his job, had his car repossessed, and lost his home. He wrote 369 Days about that period, and Burnout Proof about what he learned afterwards. Both books frame burnout as a cascade rather than a single event, which is how most leaders actually experience it. The credentials matter because they bracket the work. On one side, a finance and operations career as a CFO and CIO with oversight of budgets over USD 2 billion, including healthcare leadership roles. On the other, formal training as a CBT and NLP therapist. The Breakfast Leadership Network sits between those two, advising organisations on culture, retention, and burnout prevention. The recognition is consistent. Thinkers360 places him in the Top 100 Global Thought Leaders on Culture, HR, Management, Change Management, and Health and Wellness, with Top 20 status on Culture. He hosts the Breakfast Leadership Show, named a Top 20 Global Thought Leadership podcast, and writes regularly for CEOWORLD Magazine and Thrive Global on the same set of questions a buyer is wrestling with: how to keep people, how to spot the signals early, and how to build a workplace that does not quietly cost you your best operators. Key speaking topics Burnout prevention and recovery Workplace culture and retention Employee wellbeing as an operating discipline Boundaries and remote work performance Leadership under sustained pressure Talent retention and the cost of attrition Ideal for CHROs and people leaders looking to reduce voluntary attrition and stabilise culture during sustained change. CEOs and COOs who want a credible business framing of burnout rather than a wellness add-on. Healthcare, financial services, and professional services audiences where pressure is structural and the cost of senior departures is high. Leadership teams introducing or relaunching hybrid and remote operating models. Audience outcomes A clear read on the early operating signals of burnout, before they become resignations. Specific tactics for building boundaries into how teams work, not just how individuals cope. A retention argument senior leaders can take into a budget conversation. Permission and language for executives to discuss pressure honestly without it reading as weakness. A practical model for connecting culture, wellbeing, and performance in the same operating cadence.

Why organisations work with Keely Cat-Wells She has built and sold the category. C Talent, the agency she founded in 2018, was acquired by Whalar in 2022 and remains the largest exit of a Disabled-led talent business in the sector. Her current company, Making Space, gives leaders an operating model rather than a manifesto: an employer-backed training and acquisition platform with reported lifetime earnings gains of more than $1.1M per learner. She speaks from inside the boardroom conversation, not next to it. As a Presidential Leadership Scholar, Obama Leader USA, and Forbes contributor, she carries credibility with executive audiences who are tired of generic DEI framing. She connects representation in media to talent strategy in the workforce, drawing on a roster that has placed Disabled creators in projects including The Last of Us, Avatar, and The Hunger Games. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Making Space, a venture-backed talent acquisition and learning platform for Disabled professionals. Founder of C Talent, acquired by Whalar in 2022. Co-founder, Making Space Media, with a first-look deal at Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. 2025 Presidential Leadership Scholar, 2025 Obama Leader USA, inaugural Gloria Steinem Fellow. L’Oreal Paris 2025 Women of Worth, Forbes 30 Under 30, Diana Award, One Young World Entrepreneur of the Year 2022. Forbes contributor on disability, entrepreneurship, and inclusive workforce strategy. Biography The Disabled talent pool is one of the largest underused labour markets in the global economy. Most companies do not have a working strategy for reaching it. Keely Cat-Wells builds the infrastructure that closes that gap. She founded C Talent in 2018 after disability discrimination ended an early career in performing arts. The agency grew into the most prominent home for Deaf and Disabled creators in entertainment, placing talent in The Last of Us, Avatar, and The Hunger Games before being acquired by Whalar in 2022. It remains the largest exit of a Disabled-led talent business in the industry. Making Space, founded in 2023, is the operator-led answer to a different question: how do enterprise employers actually hire and retain Disabled professionals at scale. The platform pairs employer-backed training with talent acquisition, and closed a $2M pre-seed round led by Beta Boom in 2024. Its Ascend program reports projected lifetime earnings gains of more than $1.1M per participant. Cat-Wells writes for Forbes, sits on disability-focused boards, and was named the youngest Presidential Leadership Scholar in the program’s history. Her recognitions include the Diana Award, Forbes 30 Under 30, L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth, and Gloria Steinem Fellow. The credentials matter, but the harder evidence is the line item her work creates on a hiring scorecard. Key speaking topics Disability and workforce strategy Hiring and retaining Disabled professionals Inclusive talent acquisition platforms Representation in media and entertainment Building and scaling mission-led ventures Hidden disabilities in the workplace Founder experience in inclusive entrepreneurship Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent acquisition rebuilding disability hiring strategy Chief diversity and inclusion officers moving from awareness work to operational outcomes Boards and ELTs reviewing workforce, ESG, and human capital reporting Media, entertainment, and creative leaders accountable for on-screen and off-screen representation Audience outcomes A clearer view of where disability inclusion programmes break in practice and what to fix first. Specific tactics for sourcing, onboarding, and retaining Disabled professionals at enterprise scale. A founder’s view of how to translate inclusion strategy into measurable economic outcomes. Language and evidence senior leaders can use with their own boards on disability as a workforce issue.

Why organisations work with Meridith Elliott Powell A researched 9-Step Formula for Thriving in Uncertainty, drawn from a study of nine companies that have survived since the late 1700s through wars, depressions, and pandemics. The framework gives sales and leadership teams a repeatable playbook rather than a motivational prompt. Twenty-five years of operating experience across banking, healthcare, and finance, including C-suite roles. The advice lands with sales leaders because it was built inside the function, not observed from outside it. Inducted into the National Speakers Association Speaker Hall of Fame (CPAE) in 2022, an award restricted to a small number of speakers globally. A credential that buyers recognise as a quality bar. A body of work that connects three commercial problems most organisations treat separately: sales performance, leadership development, and succession planning. Useful when a sponsor wants a single voice across a sales kickoff, a leadership offsite, and a board session. Biography highlights Inducted into the National Speakers Association Speaker Hall of Fame (CPAE Council of Peers Award for Excellence), 2022 Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), held by fewer than twelve percent of professional speakers globally Author of Thrive: Strategies to Turn Uncertainty to Competitive Advantage, Gold Award winner, Nonfiction Authors Association Author of Who Comes Next? Leadership Succession Planning Made Easy and co-author of The Best Sales Book Ever with Connie Podesta Member of the Forbes Coaching Council LinkedIn Learning instructor, including “Personalizing Your Customer’s Buying Experience” Biography Most sales playbooks assume the operating environment is broadly stable. Powell’s research started from the opposite premise. She studied nine companies founded in the late 1700s and early 1800s that have survived wars, depressions, financial crises, and pandemics, and reverse-engineered what those companies did consistently that newer competitors did not. The output is her 9-Step Formula for Thriving in Uncertainty, set out in Thrive: Strategies to Turn Uncertainty to Competitive Advantage, which won a Gold Award from the Nonfiction Authors Association. That research sits on top of twenty-five years of operating experience in banking, healthcare, and finance, including C-suite roles. The framework was built for sales leaders and general managers who own a number, not for a leadership-development audience. The practical claim is straightforward. Uncertainty is not a phase to wait out; it is the structural condition under which growth has to happen, and organisations that accept that can take share from competitors who are still waiting. Powell’s wider body of work extends the thesis into adjacent commercial problems. Who Comes Next? Leadership Succession Planning Made Easy addresses the pipeline problem most sales and leadership teams under-invest in until it becomes urgent. The Best Sales Book Ever, co-authored with Connie Podesta, sets out the seller behaviours that survive volatile markets. Her LinkedIn Learning courses, including “Personalizing Your Customer’s Buying Experience”, carry the same operational register into shorter-format material. The recognition is consistent with the work. Powell holds the Certified Speaking Professional designation, sits on the Forbes Coaching Council, and was inducted into the National Speakers Association Speaker Hall of Fame in 2022, a credential held by a small number of speakers globally and one buyers use as a quality filter when commissioning sales and leadership keynotes. Key speaking topics Sales strategy in uncertain markets Business growth and competitive advantage Leadership succession and pipeline development Sales team performance and culture Resilience and mental toughness in commercial roles Customer experience and buyer behaviour Ideal for Chief revenue officers, sales directors, and commercial leadership teams running national or global sales kickoffs CEOs and executive teams setting growth strategy under volatile demand conditions HR and talent leaders responsible for leadership succession in commercial functions Industry associations in banking, financial services, healthcare, and distribution sectors Audience outcomes A named nine-step framework for turning uncertainty into a source of competitive advantage, tied to real company evidence Specific commercial behaviours sales teams can adopt when the macro environment is working against them A succession-planning lens leaders can apply to the next eighteen months, not the next five years Sharper language for talking to customers when buying decisions are slower and more conservative