Talent Retention Strategies speakers

Why organisations work with Otmar Szafnauer He has run a Formula 1 constructor through administration and out the other side with the workforce intact, a credential almost no other operational leader on the speaking circuit can claim. He led the same team across three brand identities, Force India, Racing Point and Aston Martin, which gives him direct experience of the gap between a rebrand on paper and a rebrand in the engineering hall. His technical grounding, an engineering degree paired with operational roles at Ford, BAR, Honda and Force India, means board audiences get specifics on how decisions actually move through a complex organisation, not motivational abstractions. He has worked under three very different ownership cultures, from Vijay Mallya at Force India to Lawrence Stroll at Racing Point and Renault Group at Alpine, and can speak credibly about leading inside contested governance structures. Biography highlights Team Principal and CEO, Racing Point F1 and Aston Martin F1, 2018 to January 2022. Team Principal, BWT Alpine F1 Team, February 2022 to July 2023. Senior leadership at Force India from October 2009, including the team’s 2016 and 2017 fourth-place Constructors’ Championship finishes. Former Vice President, Honda Racing Developments, after entering F1 as Operations Director at British American Racing in 1998. Founder and Chairman, Soft Pauer, publisher of the official Formula 1 Timing iPhone app launched in 2009. BSc Electrical Engineering, Wayne State University; master’s in Business and Finance, University of Detroit Mercy. Biography Force India was placed in administration in mid-2018 after Vijay Mallya’s financial collapse. The garage was full of staff who had been approached by other teams, and a technical director the rivals very much wanted. The team came out of that summer with most of its people still in their seats. Otmar Szafnauer was the operational leader who kept them there. That period is the centre of his value to a serious audience. Across more than a decade running the same Silverstone constructor under three brands, Force India, Racing Point and finally Aston Martin, he saw what holds a high-performance organisation together when ownership, identity and strategy all change at once. The answer turned out to be unglamorous: honesty in front of the workforce, continuity of technical leadership, and a refusal to let the rebrand outrun the operating reality. His route into that role was deliberate. An electrical engineering degree from Wayne State, an MBA in finance from Detroit Mercy, then Ford, then Formula 1 from 1998 onwards, including a Vice President role at Honda Racing Developments. The result is a leader who can speak to engineers and to a board, and who treats culture as something built on calendar-blocked decisions about hiring, accountability and recognition rather than slogans. His later move to Alpine, where he served as Team Principal from 2022 until July 2023, gives the picture its second half. Running an OEM-owned team under Renault Group meant operating inside a corporate governance structure, with all of the political weight that implies. Few operators have led both an independent privateer and a manufacturer-owned team at the same level, and the contrast is the substance of what he can say to leaders managing similar shifts of their own. Key speaking topics High-performance team leadership Leadership through restructure and ownership change Culture, accountability and psychological safety in elite environments Operational decision-making under time and resource pressure Lessons from three decades inside Formula 1 leadership Building and retaining technical talent in competitive markets Ideal for Boards and executive teams navigating ownership change, M&A integration or a corporate rebrand CHROs and people leaders responsible for retaining critical talent through periods of uncertainty Senior operators in technical and engineering-led organisations Leadership development audiences focused on composure and decision quality under pressure Audience outcomes A working sense of what leadership actually does for a workforce when ownership and strategy are in flux Specific examples of how culture, retention and accountability hold up in genuinely high-stakes environments A practical view of the difference between a rebrand on paper and a rebrand inside the operating organisation Confidence that the lessons translate, drawn from a domain where the consequences of poor decisions are visible every fortnight

Why organisations work with Peter Avis A career from dishwasher to General Manager of Galvin at Windows at the London Hilton on Park Lane, giving him operational credibility with both frontline teams and executive leadership in the same room. Fifteen years inside the Virgin Group, working alongside Sir Richard Branson on the London Roof Gardens, Mont Rochelle and Kasbah Tamadot, where service culture is a measurable commercial asset. UK Restaurant Manager of the Year in 2009 and Chairman of the UK Guild of Restaurant Services, recognised credentials that translate hospitality language into commercially serious customer experience. A working operator’s view of employee engagement, not a consultant’s deck: how rosters, recognition and recruitment actually change guest outcomes. Biography highlights General Manager of Galvin at Windows and 10 Degrees Bar at the London Hilton on Park Lane from February 2020, succeeding Fred Sirieix. UK Restaurant Manager of the Year, 2009, while running Babylon Restaurant at The Roof Gardens, which won Best London Restaurant at the Visit London Awards in 2008. More than 15 years with the Virgin Group, including involvement in the launches of Virgin Limited Edition properties Mont Rochelle in South Africa and Kasbah Tamadot in Morocco. Chairman of the UK Guild of Restaurant Services and Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality. Recipient of the 2014 Richard Branson Special Award for Services to the Community and the 2014 Carey Award Manager of the Year. Awarded the Platinum Jubilee Medal in 2022 and inducted into the Seal of Excellence at the House of Lords for services to hospitality. Biography Service businesses can describe their brand promise clearly. The difficulty is keeping it intact across a 14-hour service, three sittings, a kitchen running short and a new starter on the floor. That gap, between corporate standard and the table the guest is actually sitting at, is the problem Peter Avis has spent a career solving. He began as a dishwasher in Liverpool and ran kitchens, floors and rooms up through the ranks at named London venues. By 2009 he was UK Restaurant Manager of the Year at Babylon Restaurant in The Roof Gardens, Kensington. Babylon had taken Best London Restaurant at the Visit London Awards a year earlier under his management. Fifteen years inside the Virgin Group followed, working closely with Sir Richard Branson and the Virgin Limited Edition team. He was part of the launch teams for Mont Rochelle in South Africa and Kasbah Tamadot in Morocco, brands where service is the product. In 2020 he was appointed General Manager of Galvin at Windows and 10 Degrees Bar at the London Hilton on Park Lane, succeeding Fred Sirieix. That breadth gives him an unusually grounded view of engagement, recognition and service culture. He chairs the UK Guild of Restaurant Services and holds Fellow status at the Institute of Hospitality. Boards and operational leaders book him because he can talk about engagement, retention and customer experience in the language of a working operator, not a consultant. Key speaking topics Customer service and guest experience Employee engagement in service businesses Building high-performing hospitality teams Leadership in service operations Delivering on a brand promise Recognition, retention and culture in frontline industries Ideal for Hospitality, leisure and retail leadership teams and operations directors Customer experience and service excellence functions across consumer-facing industries HR and people leaders working on engagement and retention in frontline workforces Conferences focused on service culture, brand delivery and operational excellence Audience outcomes A practical view of how recognition, recruitment and floor leadership change guest outcomes A clearer understanding of where brand promise breaks down between executive intent and frontline delivery Specific examples from named flagship operations rather than generic service theory Confidence that service excellence is a managed system, not a personality trait

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

Why organisations work with Ram Charan The Leadership Pipeline gives boards and CHROs a six-passage diagnostic framework – built from research across more than 100 global corporations – for selecting, developing, and assessing leaders at each organizational level. Most leadership development programmes describe this kind of architecture in principle. Charan operationalized it. His co-authored book Execution made a specific argument that most organizations resist: strategy failure is a discipline failure, not a strategy failure. Spending 150 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list suggests the argument landed. The named disciplines it identifies – talent selection, operating reviews, and decision accountability – give executive teams something to act on, not just reflect on. Client relationships at GE (approximately four decades) and DuPont (approximately three) are not testimonials. They are evidence of how a working model holds up under repeated stress at the apex of large, complex organizations. He originated business acumen as a teachable, measurable organizational capability rather than an executive personality trait. The curriculum built around What the CEO Wants You to Know has been adopted at major corporations as a tool for developing commercial judgment across all levels of leadership. His work on corporate governance, including Boards That Lead (co-authored with Dennis Carey and Michael Useem), gives directors specific tools for managing the boundary between governance and management – one of the most contested and consequential relationships in any large organization. Biography highlights Harvard Business School MBA and DBA; graduated Baker Scholar with high distinction Former faculty member at Harvard Business School, Northwestern University (Kellogg School of Management), Wharton School, and GE’s Crotonville Leadership Institute Co-author of Execution (with Larry Bossidy, 2002) – number 1 Wall Street Journal bestseller and New York Times bestseller for 150 weeks Author and co-author of more than 30 books with over 4 million copies sold in more than twelve languages; publisher record via ram-charan.com Distinguished Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Time, and Chief Executive; listed on Thinkers50 Long-term advisor to GE, DuPont, Bank of America, KLM, Verizon, Novartis, 3M, and the Tata and Aditya Birla Groups Biography Most organizations can articulate their strategy clearly. Fewer can explain why it consistently fails to arrive at the front line. Ram Charan has spent four decades working inside that gap – as an advisor to CEOs and boards at GE, DuPont, Bank of America, and some forty other major corporations across multiple continents. His 2002 book Execution, co-authored with former Honeywell CEO Larry Bossidy, made an argument that is still unsettling to senior teams: the problem is not the strategy, it is the absence of named disciplines for making it real. The book identified three of those disciplines – talent selection, operating reviews, and decision accountability at the CEO level – and spent 150 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The Leadership Pipeline, developed with Stephen Drotter and James Noel, pressed the argument further. It defined six discrete passages through which leaders must develop, with distinct skills, time allocation, and values required at each stage. The model is now used as a standard succession architecture at major corporations worldwide. Charan trained at Harvard Business School, graduating Baker Scholar with high distinction before joining its faculty. He later taught at Northwestern’s Kellogg School, at Wharton, and at GE’s Crotonville Leadership Institute. He left full-time academia in 1978 to consult – a decision shaped by a conviction, present from the start, that the real problems of business are not solved in classrooms but inside the operating decisions that organizations make every day. His body of work – more than thirty books, including What the CEO Wants You to Know, Boards That Lead, and Global Tilt – is structured around a single question: what does it actually take to build an organization that delivers? Directors, CHROs, and CEO teams use his frameworks not because they are theoretically elegant but because they name things that were previously unnameable – and give senior leaders something concrete to do on Monday morning. Key speaking topics Execution as organizational discipline Leadership Pipeline and succession architecture Business acumen as a teachable capability Corporate governance and board-CEO relationship Growth strategy and profitability fundamentals Global competition and emerging market strategy Talent development and leadership readiness Ideal for CEOs and board directors working on succession planning, governance accountability, or the gap between strategic intent and operational performance CHROs and talent leaders designing or overhauling leadership development and succession frameworks Senior executive teams where strategy is consistently better-articulated than delivered Leadership development programmes at global corporations seeking an established, research-backed architecture Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying where the leadership pipeline is blocked and what specific actions unblock it A clear distinction between strategy and execution, and the named disciplines – talent, decision-making, and operating process – that close the gap Practical tools for assessing leadership readiness at each stage of the organizational hierarchy A framework for structuring the board-CEO relationship and understanding when governance becomes leadership An understanding of business acumen as a measurable, developable skill applicable across organizational levels – not just at the top

Why organisations work with Rashim Mogha Two decades inside the rooms where women’s leadership advancement is decided. Senior roles at Oracle, Amazon Web Services, VMware, Automation Anywhere, and Skillsoft, building teams that supported over $2 billion in business. Few speakers on this topic carry that operational depth. Her work is built on a published, repeatable framework. The #1 Amazon bestseller Fast-Track Your Leadership Career gives HR teams and emerging leaders a specific template covering sponsorship, brand-building, and the unwritten rules of internal promotion. She treats women’s leadership development as a pipeline and retention question, which lands with executives who are accountable for the actual numbers. That framing avoids the trap of positioning DEI as a values exercise sitting outside business outcomes. Her LinkedIn Learning courses have reached over 250,000 professionals globally. That scale gives her a working understanding of which leadership content actually shifts behaviour across geographies and seniority levels. The credentials are named and external. Woman of the Year at the Women in IT Awards Silicon Valley, Top 20 Thought Leader by Thinkers360, Top 100 DEI Leader by Mogul, and induction into the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of eWOW (empowered Women of the World), launched in November 2018; podcast audiences in more than 50 countries Author of the #1 Amazon bestseller Fast-Track Your Leadership Career and its companion Guided Journal; reached #1 on Amazon within eleven hours of release LinkedIn Learning instructor with courses including Succeeding as a First-Time Tech Manager, Women Transforming Tech: Finding Sponsors, and Cloud Concepts: Determining Your Cloud Strategy; over 250,000 learners globally Senior leadership roles at Oracle, Amazon Web Services, VMware, Automation Anywhere, and Skillsoft, building teams supporting over $2 billion in business Forbes Business Council member; contributor to Forbes, Association for Talent Development (ATD), and Thrive Global Recognitions include Woman of the Year (Women in IT Awards Silicon Valley), Silicon Valley Woman of Influence, Top 20 Thought Leader (Thinkers360), Top 100 DEI Leader (Mogul), and induction into the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame Biography American women hold 52 percent of professional-level jobs. They hold roughly 20 percent of executive leadership positions in US high-tech industries. The gap between those numbers is what Rashim Mogha has worked inside for two decades, first at Oracle, AWS, and VMware, then as founder of eWOW. Her #1 Amazon bestseller Fast-Track Your Leadership Career codified what she learned inside those companies. It treats career advancement as an integrated strategy. Sponsorship and personal brand are framed as concrete corporate moves, drawn from her own promotion path. The book hit number one on Amazon within eleven hours of release. eWOW, which she founded in November 2018, scaled the method beyond a single book. Its podcast reaches audiences in more than fifty countries. Her LinkedIn Learning courses, including Succeeding as a First-Time Tech Manager and Women Transforming Tech: Finding Sponsors, have been taken by more than 250,000 professionals globally. Few speakers on women’s tech leadership combine that operational depth with that audience reach. Her credibility with executive audiences sits in the specifics. Woman of the Year at the Women in IT Awards Silicon Valley. Top 20 Thought Leader by Thinkers360. Forbes Business Council member. Inducted into the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame. For organisations focused on the leadership pipeline rather than the talking points, that combination of operational record and external recognition is rare. Key speaking topics Women’s leadership advancement in technology Sponsorship and career advancement strategy Diversity as a talent pipeline question Leadership development for technical professionals Mindful leadership Cloud strategy and digital transformation for business leaders Future of work and corporate learning at scale Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers responsible for stronger leadership pipelines for women in technology Heads of DEI and Talent looking to move beyond awareness toward measurable promotion outcomes Women’s networks and ERGs inside technology, financial services, and professional services organisations L&D and learning leaders designing executive development programmes for emerging women leaders Audience outcomes The distinction between mentorship and sponsorship, and the specific moves required to convert one into the other Practical language for asking for promotion and stretch assignments A diagnostic for what is actually stalling a woman’s advancement at her current level Two operational levers HR and senior leaders can pull to shift promotion outcomes inside the next twelve months

Why organisations work with Rasmus Ankersen He has actually built the model he talks about. As chairman of FC Midtjylland, the club won three Danish Superliga titles using a data-led recruitment and set-piece method that was later studied across European football. His book The Gold Mine Effect is grounded in seven months of field research inside the world’s most productive talent ecosystems, from Brazilian football academies to Ethiopian distance running, not a desk study of secondary literature. Through Sport Republic, he runs a multi-club investment platform now controlling Southampton FC and Goztepe SK, so the lens on capital allocation, scouting markets and downside management is operational, not theoretical. He gives boards a vocabulary for the awkward conversation about success: how organisations stop learning the moment results turn positive, and what to do about it before the next cycle. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Sport Republic, owner of Southampton FC and majority owner of Goztepe SK. Co-director of football at Brentford FC, 2015 to 2020, the platform that produced Premier League promotion in 2021. Chairman of FC Midtjylland during a period that included Danish Superliga titles in 2015, 2018 and 2020. Author of The Gold Mine Effect (Icon Books, 2012) and Hunger in Paradise (2016). TEDxManchester speaker on football analytics applied to organisational decision-making. Has delivered keynotes for LEGO, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group, Roche, AstraZeneca, Coca-Cola and Cisco. Biography Brentford were a mid-table Championship club when Matthew Benham, Rasmus Ankersen and a small analytics team set out to build a Premier League squad without Premier League money. The same logic was applied at FC Midtjylland in Denmark. Both clubs went on to win, repeatedly, against opponents with bigger budgets and longer histories. That track record is the foundation of Ankersen’s argument to corporate audiences. The bias to overvalue established names and undervalue evidence is not a football problem. It is a recruiting problem, a capital allocation problem, and a strategy problem. His book The Gold Mine Effect, published in 2012 after seven months living inside elite training environments from Kenya to Brazil, makes the case that performance hotbeds are produced, not discovered. His second book, Hunger in Paradise, takes the harder question. Why do successful organisations stop learning. He frames complacency as the silent failure mode of a winning strategy, and argues that the work of leadership is to keep the system honest after the results turn good. The thesis has resonated with senior teams at LEGO, Google, BCG, Roche and others who have brought him in. Today he runs Sport Republic, the investment vehicle that acquired Southampton FC in 2022 and now operates a multi-club model across England, Turkey and Belgium. The day job means his frameworks are tested in real time, against real capital, in one of the most ruthless performance markets there is. Key speaking topics High-performance culture Talent identification and development Data-driven decision-making Avoiding complacency in successful organisations Performance environments and ecosystems Lessons from elite sport for business Leadership and decision-making under pressure Ideal for CEOs and executive teams in scaled organisations entering a new performance cycle CHROs and talent leaders rebuilding recruitment and assessment models Strategy and corporate development leaders responsible for capital allocation and M&A Boards examining why a winning strategy is starting to plateau Audience outcomes A sharper view of where the organisation is overpaying for proven names and underinvesting in evidence. A working definition of complacency that can be diagnosed in the business, not just lamented. Concrete examples of how data and judgement combine in high-stakes decisions, drawn from Brentford, Midtjylland and Southampton. A reframing of what a “performance environment” is, and why most attempts to import one fail.

Why organisations work with Ravin Jesuthasan He gives boards and executive teams an actual blueprint for moving from jobs to skills, not a slide about why it matters. The Work Without Jobs framework, developed with John Boudreau, is the reference text on the subject and is taught inside MIT Sloan and Kellogg. His day job is doing this work. As Mercer’s Global Leader of Transformation Services, he advises some of the largest employers in the world on workforce redesign, so the keynote is built on live engagements, not theory. He sits where AI, automation and human capital actually intersect. His four-step framework for applying automation to work, from Reinventing Jobs, has become a standard tool for HR and operations leaders trying to decide what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave alone. He brings institutional authority that buyers can verify. World Economic Forum Steering Committee on Work and Employment, Thinkers50 Radar, FT Book of the Month, fifteen pieces in HBR and MIT Sloan Management Review. His material is built for the CHRO and the CEO in the same room. Many future-of-work speakers pitch to one or the other. He frames the work redesign question as a board-level operating decision, which is how it now needs to be sold internally. Biography highlights Global Leader of Transformation Services at Mercer. Executive Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer of Executive Education, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Author of five books including Work Without Jobs (MIT Press, 2022) and The Skills-Powered Organization (MIT Press, 2024). Wall Street Journal bestseller; Financial Times Book of the Month, October 2024. Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2020; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Talent Award 2023. World Economic Forum Steering Committee member on Work and Employment. Over 200 published articles, including 15 in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review; regular Forbes contributor. CFA charterholder and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). Biography The job, as a unit of organisational architecture, is starting to look obsolete. Roles are static, skills inside them decay in months rather than years, and AI is now capable of doing chunks of work that used to define entire functions. Most large employers know this. Very few know what to replace the jobs-based model with. This is the territory Ravin Jesuthasan has spent two decades mapping. As Global Leader of Transformation Services at Mercer, he advises multinational employers on how to rebuild their workforce architecture around skills and tasks rather than fixed job descriptions. The same body of work runs through Work Without Jobs, written with John Boudreau and published by MIT Press in 2022, and its 2024 follow-up, The Skills-Powered Organization, written with Tanuj Kapilashrami and named Financial Times Book of the Month in October 2024. The institutional credentials match the intellectual claim. He sits on the World Economic Forum’s Steering Committee on Work and Employment, holds an Executive Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer appointment at the Kellogg School of Management, and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2020 before being shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Talent Award in 2023. He has written more than 200 articles, including fifteen pieces for Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, and contributes regularly to Forbes. For boards now being asked how AI will reshape headcount, productivity and capability, his contribution is not a forecast. It is an operating model: a structured way of deciding what work gets deconstructed, which tasks get automated or augmented, and how the organisation acquires the skills it will actually need next year, not the jobs it posted last year. Key speaking topics The skills-powered organisation Reinventing jobs through automation and AI The future of work and the work operating system Workforce transformation and human capital strategy Human-AI collaboration in the enterprise The future of the Chief People Officer role Sustainable digital transformation Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers rebuilding the workforce model around skills and AI. CEOs and boards making capital-level decisions on AI, automation and headcount. Transformation, operations and strategy leaders responsible for redesigning how work gets done. Executive teams preparing for skills-based talent markets and post-jobs operating models. Audience outcomes A working definition of the skills-powered organisation and how it differs from a jobs-based model. A four-step method for deciding what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave to humans. A board-ready argument for treating work design as a strategic operating decision, not an HR programme. Specific case examples from global employers already deconstructing jobs into tasks and skills.

Why organisations work with Reed Hastings The «Freedom and Responsibility» framework – documented in the Netflix Culture Deck and codified in No Rules Rules – gives organisations a named, sequenced model for replacing bureaucracy with accountability: not a philosophy, but a tested operating system built across a 200-person startup through to a 300-million-subscriber global company. Hastings applied the same cultural principles across four distinct business-model transitions at Netflix – DVD rental, streaming, original content production, and global expansion into 190 countries – providing evidence that the model holds across radically different operating contexts, not just favourable ones. His 2025 appointment to the board of Anthropic by its Long Term Benefit Trust positions him to speak directly to AI governance challenges at board level, based on direct engagement with one of the sector’s leading AI safety organisations – not commentary from the outside. He has publicly documented a major failure – the 2011 Qwikster decision, widely covered in the press – as a case study in what his own cultural model gets wrong under pressure, giving audiences honest access to failure alongside success. A $50 million commitment to Bowdoin College’s AI and Humanity research programme gives him a substantive, funded position on AI’s workforce and societal impact – relevant to CHROs, boards, and executive teams now building their own AI governance frameworks. Biography highlights Co-founder and executive chairman of Netflix; CEO from 1998 to 2023 – led the company through four business-model transformations, from DVD rental to global streaming platform and original content studio Co-authored No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention (2020) with INSEAD professor Erin Meyer – New York Times bestseller, shortlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Two published TED talks: «How Netflix changed entertainment – and where it’s headed» (TED2018) and «3 secrets to Netflix’s success» (TED2020) Former board member of Microsoft (2007–2012) and Facebook/Meta (2011–2019); current board member of Bloomberg and Anthropic (appointed 2025) President of the California State Board of Education (2000–2004); current board member of KIPP, City Fund, and the Charter School Growth Fund BA in Mathematics, Bowdoin College; MSCS in Artificial Intelligence, Stanford University; Peace Corps mathematics teacher in Swaziland Biography Reed Hastings built the management case at Netflix – across 25 years and four business-model transitions – that organisations scale best when they remove controls, not add them. The result was the «Freedom and Responsibility» framework, first documented in an internal Culture Deck made public in 2009. Hastings and INSEAD professor Erin Meyer later codified it in No Rules Rules (2020), a New York Times bestseller shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. The framework’s argument runs in sequence: high talent density creates the conditions for radical candor, which in turn enables leaders to eliminate policies, approval layers, and bureaucratic controls. This ordered logic is what separates the Netflix model from generic arguments for employee autonomy. It was not derived from a single favourable configuration – it was tested across DVD, streaming, original production, and international expansion simultaneously, and it broke and was rebuilt along the way. Hastings has spoken publicly about the Qwikster decision as a case in what the model costs when applied badly. Before Netflix, Hastings founded Pure Software in 1991, took it public in 1995, and sold it to Rational Software. That experience of scaling an engineer-led startup into a public corporation shaped his understanding of what happens to culture as organisations grow and complicate. It is the origin of the argument, not merely its backdrop. Hastings sits on the board of Anthropic, appointed in 2025 by its Long Term Benefit Trust to help guide AI development for long-term societal benefit. A $50 million gift to Bowdoin College to establish an AI and Humanity research programme adds institutional weight to that engagement. For boards and leadership teams now navigating AI governance, he brings a practitioner’s perspective – not an observer’s. Key speaking topics Organisational culture and management design The Freedom and Responsibility framework Talent density and high-performance teams Scaling technology-driven businesses AI governance and the societal impact of technology Corporate governance and board-level leadership Education reform and systemic institutional leadership Ideal for CEOs and executive leadership teams navigating growth, culture change, or organisational redesign CHROs and people leaders building high-performance cultures at scale Board directors and governance leads in technology, media, and high-growth organisations Senior leadership teams with active AI governance or AI adoption agendas Audience outcomes A concrete understanding of the «Freedom and Responsibility» framework – and the specific conditions (talent density, radical candor) required before eliminating controls, not after Clarity on how Netflix’s cultural principles functioned as a sequenced system across multiple business-model transitions, including where the model failed A working frame for evaluating which management policies and controls serve organisational performance and which impede it Board-level perspective on AI governance and the human-impact questions that senior leaders now need to address with institutional seriousness Practical reference points from a 25-year operating record – including documented failures – for leadership teams working through their own culture and performance challenges

Why organisations work with Rene Godefroy He brings a named, ownable philosophy. The “Village Hero” frame gives leaders a vocabulary for belonging that survives the keynote and shows up in daily behaviour. His client roster is unusually concentrated in frontline, customer-facing organisations. Coca-Cola, Aflac, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Marriott, Hyatt, the U.S. Army. He speaks to the people who actually carry the brand. The resilience material is grounded in a specific lived narrative, not borrowed research. That gives the message authority with audiences who have heard the standard motivational circuit. He writes and speaks for retention and morale outcomes, not abstract inspiration. The brief he answers best is the one that mentions turnover, change fatigue, or a workforce that has stopped believing the slogans. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Village Hero, Inc., Atlanta. Author of Kick Your Excuses Goodbye: No Condition Is Permanent. Keynote work for Coca-Cola, AT&T, Aflac, Verizon Wireless, Marriott Hotels, Hyatt Hotels, and the U.S. Army. Speaker at the National Association for Pupil Transportation and the Michigan Assisted Living Association annual conference. Recognised by the City of Smyrna, Georgia with a dedicated “Rene Godefroy Day”; granted a key to the city by Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Runs humanitarian work supporting orphanages and health clinics in Haiti, partly funded by program fees. Biography Most workplace culture problems are not really about culture. They are about belonging. People decide to stay, contribute and look out for one another long before any engagement survey captures it, and they decide on the basis of small, daily signals from the people above them. That is the territory the “Village Hero” philosophy sits in. The frame comes from a specific origin. Godefroy grew up in a rural Haitian village, arrived in the United States as a young man with almost nothing, and worked through janitorial and service jobs before building a speaking practice. The argument he draws from that life is not biographical theatre. It is a working theory of how belonging is built one act at a time, and how leaders carry disproportionate responsibility for those acts inside an organisation. That theory has been tested against a particular kind of audience. His client list, Coca-Cola, AT&T, Aflac, Verizon Wireless, Marriott, Hyatt, the U.S. Army, is heavy on frontline and customer-facing workforces, where morale, retention and belief in the mission show up directly in operational performance. Kick Your Excuses Goodbye: No Condition Is Permanent extends the same material into individual accountability for change, particularly under pressure and constraint. He is most useful to organisations that have already tried the values posters and the engagement task force, and are now asking a more honest question. What behaviour, repeated daily by managers, would actually rebuild the social contract here. The Village Hero framework gives them a starting answer, and the City of Smyrna, Georgia, which declared a “Rene Godefroy Day” in his honour, gives a small civic indicator of the impression that practice has left. Key speaking topics Resilience and change leadership Workplace culture and belonging Employee engagement and morale Team performance under pressure Frontline leadership Purpose-driven leadership Personal accountability and mindset Ideal for HR, people and culture leaders rebuilding engagement and retention in frontline-heavy workforces Operations and customer experience leaders in retail, hospitality, telecoms, insurance, and logistics Sales kick-offs and dealer or franchisee networks that need a morale reset, not a tactics talk Defence, public sector and uniformed services audiences with high-pressure operating conditions Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for belonging that managers can use the next day, anchored in the “Village Hero” frame A direct, personal challenge to the stories teams tell themselves about change and constraint Concrete behaviours that lift morale and retention without waiting for a new culture programme A renewed sense of purpose for workforces fatigued by repeated restructuring and uncertainty

Why organisations work with René Meulensteen He spent six years inside the Ferguson dressing room during one of the most studied winning runs in modern sport, and can describe how standards, feedback, and selection were actually managed day to day. He developed and ran the individual technical and finishing programme that Cristiano Ronaldo credits for the shift from winger to record goalscorer, a working example of how senior performers are coached, not managed. His book “United, Sir Alex and Me”, with a foreword by Ferguson, gives him a documented and endorsed account of the methodology behind a sustained elite culture. As Assistant National Team Coach to the Australia Socceroos, he has carried the same operating model into a different country, league, and squad and reached the World Cup knockout stage with it. Biography highlights First Team Coach at Manchester United from 2007 to 2013 under Sir Alex Ferguson. Three Premier League titles, one UEFA Champions League and one FIFA Club World Cup during his First Team Coach tenure. Twelve years at Manchester United in total, beginning in 2001 as Youth Technical Skills Development Coach. Author of “United, Sir Alex and Me: My Life in Football” (2023), foreword by Sir Alex Ferguson. Assistant National Team Coach to the Australia Socceroos, contributing to qualification and Round of 16 progression at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Former Head Coach of Fulham FC in the English Premier League. Biography Manchester United won three Premier League titles, a Champions League and a FIFA Club World Cup in the years René Meulensteen spent as First Team Coach under Sir Alex Ferguson. The interesting question is not what was won. It is how a squad of senior internationals kept raising standards once they had already won everything. Meulensteen joined the club in 2001 as a youth technical skills development coach, working with academy players on the kind of detail that usually disappears once a player turns professional. By 2007 he was working with the first team, running individual development sessions with players including Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand and Ryan Giggs. The Ronaldo finishing programme, run during a suspension early in the 2007-08 season, is one of the few publicly documented cases of an elite forward being rebuilt as a goalscorer by deliberate coaching design. After Ferguson’s retirement in 2013, Meulensteen took head coach roles at Anzhi Makhachkala and Fulham FC in the Premier League, then moved into international football. Since 2018 he has been Assistant National Team Coach to the Australia Socceroos under Graham Arnold, including the squad’s progression to the knockout stage of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. His book “United, Sir Alex and Me”, co-written with Wayne Barton and with a foreword by Ferguson, sets out the working methodology behind that period: how standards were set, how individuals were stretched, how a culture was held together across generations of senior players. That is the material organisations engage him to translate. Key speaking topics Building and sustaining a winning culture Coaching senior performers through individual development Leadership transition and succession in elite environments Standards, feedback and accountability inside high performance teams Translating elite sport methodology into executive teams Team cohesion across generations and personalities Ideal for Executive teams and boards seeking to maintain performance after a founder, CEO or long-tenured leader transitions out Sales leadership, partner groups and senior performer cohorts where individual development is the unlock Talent and people leaders responsible for high performance culture, succession and leadership pipeline Leadership offsites and conferences focused on team cohesion and sustained excellence Audience outcomes A working understanding of how Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United actually operated day to day, told from inside the coaching staff A concrete model of how senior performers are developed individually, drawn from the Ronaldo finishing programme Specific language for the standards, feedback and accountability practices that hold an elite culture together A clearer view of the leadership behaviours that survive a change at the top, and the ones that do not

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 Rich Karlgaard Four decades of close-range observation of Silicon Valley business models, written from the editorial chair of Forbes, give him a fluent read on how technology cycles change the rules of competition. The Soft Edge sets out a specific argument that durable advantage comes from trust, intelligence, teams, taste and story, not from strategy and execution alone, and gives boards a vocabulary for the cultural side of growth. Late Bloomers challenges the early-achievement orthodoxy in corporate hiring and promotion, useful for leaders rethinking talent pipelines, succession and the cost of writing off mid-career performers. Team Genius, co-authored with Michael S. Malone, draws on research into team size, composition and dynamics, giving operating leaders a structured way to think about how high-performing groups are actually built. Karlgaard moderates and panels at scale at events such as the Milken Institute Global Conference and the ASU+GSV Summit, comfortable in front of CEO and investor audiences and able to push beyond a prepared script. Biography highlights Editor-at-large and futurist, Forbes Media; publisher of Forbes magazine, 1998 to 2018. Author of Late Bloomers (Currency, 2019), The Soft Edge (Jossey-Bass, 2014), Team Genius (HarperBusiness, 2015, with Michael S. Malone) and Life 2.0 (2004). Long-running Forbes columnist, “Innovation Rules” (formerly “Digital Rules”); regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal opinion pages and panellist on Forbes on FOX. Co-founder of the Churchill Club, Silicon Valley’s largest public business and technology forum, and of Upside magazine and Forbes ASAP. Northern California winner, Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year, 1997. Featured on NPR for Late Bloomers and a regular speaker at the Milken Institute Global Conference and the ASU+GSV Summit. Biography The companies that compound advantage over decades tend to look ordinary up close. They are not always the fastest or the most aggressive. What they share is a set of cultural conditions, trust, taste, intelligence about their own people, that competitors cannot easily copy. That is the argument running through Rich Karlgaard’s work at Forbes and in his books. Karlgaard has watched Silicon Valley from the editorial chair of a major business title for more than two decades. He was publisher of Forbes from 1998 to 2018 and is now editor-at-large and futurist for Forbes Media. He co-founded Upside magazine, Forbes ASAP, and the Churchill Club, the largest business and technology forum in Silicon Valley, work that earned him the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for Northern California in 1997. His books map a single problem from different angles. The Soft Edge (Jossey-Bass, 2014) argues that strategy and execution are necessary but not sufficient, and that durable competitive advantage now sits in five cultural variables led by trust. Team Genius, co-written with Michael S. Malone, applies that lens to team design, drawing on research into how size, composition and conflict actually drive performance. Late Bloomers (Currency, 2019) takes the argument into talent strategy, challenging the SAT-and-startup-founder logic that writes off the people who do their best work at forty, fifty or sixty. For a board or executive audience, Karlgaard’s value is in being a serious commercial voice for the unfashionable side of growth. He does not dispute the importance of speed or technology, he lives inside both, but he treats culture, trust and patient talent development as commercial inputs with measurable returns, not as soft virtues. That framing tends to land with senior leaders who have run the playbook of relentless execution and seen the limits. Key speaking topics Innovation and the future of business Culture as competitive advantage High-performing teams Talent, late bloomers and the corporate path Silicon Valley, technology cycles and disruption Leadership in the age of smart machines Ideal for CEO, board and senior leadership audiences setting innovation and growth strategy CHROs and talent leaders rethinking hiring, promotion and succession beyond early-career markers Investor and CFO audiences who want a fluent read on Silicon Valley business models from a long-standing editorial vantage Conference programmes that need a credible moderator or panellist for executive and investor sessions Audience outcomes A working argument for why durable advantage now sits in cultural and human variables, not just strategy and execution A sharper view of how high-performing teams are actually built, drawn from the research behind Team Genius A direct challenge to the early-achievement bias in corporate hiring, promotion and succession, with named examples A current read on which technology cycles and Silicon Valley operating models matter for the next planning horizon