Team Leadership

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

Why organisations work with Emil Dobrovolschi He is a working airline captain and EASA-certified examiner, so the discipline he teaches around briefings, checklists and crew coordination is the discipline he is held to in the cockpit. Co-author of Dark Cockpit with Octavian Pantis, a published thesis that gives leaders a shared vocabulary for a calm, fully functioning operating state and the behaviours that produce it. Three decades inside a national flag carrier, including time as Director of Flight Operations, give him a frank view of what command, accountability and quiet discipline look like in a regulated organisation. The pilots he has trained as a Type Rating Instructor have gone on to fly as captains for at least twelve international airlines, evidence that his teaching method travels and holds up under examination. The aviation material is concrete. Audiences leave with named behaviours, not metaphors: how a brief is structured, how a challenge is raised, how a captain hands over control. Biography highlights Captain, instructor and examiner at TAROM since 1994, across Antonov 24, ATR 42/72, Airbus A320 and A310. Former Vice President and Director of Flight Operations, TAROM. EASA-certified Type Rating Examiner; Type Rating Instructor since 2001. Commander of special flights for the Romanian President and government officials. Co-author of Dark Cockpit: How to Communicate, Lead, and Be in Control at All Times Like an Airline Captain (with Octavian Pantis). TEDx speaker (TEDxBaiaMare, “Gata de decolare”). Biography A commercial flight deck is one of the few corporate settings where bad communication is logged, debriefed and corrected by regulation. Aviation does not assume good leaders happen. It produces them through briefings, checklists, standard calls and a regulated training cycle. Emil Dobrovolschi has spent his career inside that system. He joined TAROM, the Romanian flag carrier, in 1994 and worked through every rank from Antonov 24 co-pilot to Airbus A320 and A310 captain, instructor and examiner. As a Type Rating Instructor since 2001 and an EASA-certified examiner, he has trained pilots who now hold left-seat command at twelve or more international carriers. Inside TAROM he served as Vice President and Director of Flight Operations, and as commander of special flights for the Romanian President and government officials. The corporate work grew out of that. With consultant and author Octavian Pantis he co-wrote Dark Cockpit: How to Communicate, Lead, and Be in Control at All Times Like an Airline Captain. The dark cockpit is the aviation term for the state in which no caution lights are on, the aircraft is functioning, and the crew can do its job. The book translates that into a leadership thesis: the conditions for clarity, command and trust are designed in, not improvised when something goes wrong. In keynotes, that translation is concrete. He shows how a captain runs a pre-flight brief, how a junior officer is trained to challenge a senior one, and what changes when control is formally handed over. Senior teams use the material to look at their own briefings, escalation paths and quiet failures of communication. The authority behind it is straightforward: he is still the captain in the room. Key speaking topics Leadership and command in high-stakes environments Communication and crew resource management Decision-making under pressure Teamwork, hierarchy and the freedom to speak up Crisis management and recovery Building professional standards inside an operating culture Ideal for Executive teams and boards reviewing how decisions are taken when the situation tightens CHROs and leadership development leads designing programmes for newly senior managers Operations, safety and risk leaders in regulated industries (energy, healthcare, financial services, transport) Corporate offsites and leadership weeks looking for an external voice with operational credibility, not consulting language Audience outcomes A vocabulary borrowed from the cockpit (brief, checklist, challenge, handover) that makes everyday leadership behaviours explicit. A clearer view of where their own organisation tolerates ambiguous communication that aviation would not. Specific practices for raising a concern up a hierarchy and for receiving one. A working definition of composure under pressure as a trained behaviour, not a personality trait. A frame for distinguishing routine operations from genuine crisis, and for behaving differently in each.

Why organisations work with Kenton Cool He has summited Mount Everest 19 times, the most of any non-Nepali climber, which gives his observations on decision-making and risk a weight that no theoretical speaker can match. He led Sir Ranulph Fiennes to the Everest summit in 2009 and up the Eiger’s north face in 2007, so he speaks with first-hand authority on guiding individuals through environments they cannot manage alone. In 2013 he completed the Everest Horseshoe of Nuptse, Everest and Lhotse in seven days without returning to base camp, a previously unachieved sequence used as a case study in sustained performance and recovery between high-consequence efforts. The corporate content is rooted in repeatable expedition practice: how to read a team in real time, how to decide when to turn back, how to set a risk tolerance before the pressure begins. Biography highlights 19 summits of Mount Everest, the record for any non-Nepali climber, most recently on 18 May 2025. IFMGA/UIAGM Mountain Guide and member of the British Association of Mountain Guides. First person to climb Nuptse, Everest and Lhotse in a single push from base camp, May 2013. Led Sir Ranulph Fiennes on a successful Everest summit in 2009 and on the first British guided ascent of the Eiger’s north face in 2007. Author of One Man’s Everest (Preface, Penguin Random House, 2015). BSc Geological Sciences, University of Leeds; honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Leeds, 2018. Biography Most decisions in a corporate setting can be undone. On the Lhotse Face above Camp 3, with weather closing and oxygen burning down, they cannot. Kenton Cool has stood in that position more often than any non-Nepali climber alive, 19 times on the summit of Everest, and the corporate content he brings into boardrooms is built around what those moments actually demand of a leader. In 1996, an accident on a Welsh rock face fractured both his heel bones. A consultant told him he was unlikely to walk unaided again. He returned to climbing within a year, joined the British Association of Mountain Guides scheme, and went on to earn IFMGA certification, the gold standard for high-altitude guiding. That recovery, and the discipline behind it, shapes how he talks about resilience and the relationship between pain, judgement, and continued performance. His climbing record gives the talks their credibility. In May 2013 he completed the Everest Horseshoe of Nuptse, Everest and Lhotse in a single seven-day push without returning to base camp, a sequence no one had done before. He guided Sir Ranulph Fiennes up the Eiger’s north face in 2007 and to the Everest summit in 2009. In 2012, he carried a 1924 Olympic gold medal awarded to the 1922 British Everest expedition to the top, fulfilling an 88-year-old pledge that Lord Coe credited with helping launch the 2012 London Games. The corporate work translates this into specifics. How to set a risk tolerance before fatigue, ego or sunk cost distort the call. How to read team trust when individual capability is no longer the binding constraint. How to design decision processes that hold up when the time to think runs out. The frameworks are not academic. They are what an IFMGA guide does to bring people home from 8,000 metres. Key speaking topics High-stakes decision-making Risk tolerance and contingency planning Team trust and shared purpose Resilience after setback Leadership under physical and psychological pressure High-performance culture Ideal for Senior leadership teams and boards facing high-consequence strategic decisions Sales kick-offs, partner conferences, and after-dinner events where lived authority is the brief Transformation and operations leadership groups navigating sustained pressure Awards evenings and hosted events requiring a credible, on-stage presence Audience outcomes A concrete account of how an expedition leader sets risk tolerance and decides when to turn back A vocabulary for talking about team trust as an operational capability, not a soft attribute A working model of how to make binary calls when information is incomplete and time is short A reset on what resilience looks like when the recovery is long and the prognosis is bad Energy and a story senior audiences will repeat, anchored in a verifiable climbing record

Key speaking topics Solo offshore racing Round-the-world sailing Resilience in extreme environments High-performance sailing teams Decision-making under pressure Endurance and isolation at sea Professional offshore racing campaigns Ideal for Leadership teams Sales and high-performance teams Organisations navigating change or uncertainty Corporate conferences and industry events Audience outcomes Insight into managing risk and uncertainty in high-stakes environments. Practical lessons from solo leadership and accountability. Clear perspectives on endurance, preparation, and performance under pressure. Understanding of teamwork dynamics in professional offshore racing. Why organisations work with Cole Brauer Brings first-hand experience of competing in a solo, non-stop round-the-world race. Offers practical insights drawn from professional offshore racing campaigns. Connects extreme performance environments to business leadership and resilience. Recognised by national sailing bodies and international racing teams. Biography Cole Brauer is recognised internationally for her achievement in solo, non-stop round-the-world ocean racing. She finished second overall in the inaugural Global Solo Challenge, becoming the first American woman to complete a solo, non-stop, unassisted circumnavigation and earning recognition for a Class40 solo non-stop speed record. Her campaign combined technical precision, strategic risk management and sustained performance across more than four months alone at sea. The race drew significant global attention and built a substantial international following, positioning her as a prominent figure in modern offshore sailing. Brauer’s offshore career includes skippering the Class40 First Light and winning the Bermuda One-Two Yacht Race overall, widely reported as a first for a woman skipper in the event’s history. Her achievements were further recognised with US Sailing’s Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year award. Beyond solo racing, she competes at the highest level of professional offshore sailing as a co-skipper with Team Malizia. Her experience spans solo endurance, short-handed racing and crewed international campaigns, providing a rare perspective on leadership, accountability and performance under sustained pressure. For organisations, Brauer brings direct insight from one of the most demanding environments in sport. Her experience navigating isolation, uncertainty and high-stakes decision-making at sea translates into practical lessons for senior leaders, commercial teams and high-growth organisations operating in complex and competitive markets.

Zou Fragou operates professionally across the full spectrum of her expertise. She manages projects in culture transformation, employee training and development, business coaching, personal branding, public speaking, and writing for both private and corporate clients worldwide. She serves as a mentor for Women on Top, a feminist organization dedicated to workplace equality, and is a senior member of the Hellenic Institute of Coaching. Zou was recognized as the Best Career Coach at the Global Coaching Conference in 2021, ranked among the Top 15 Coaches in Athens in 2023, and is the number 7 global thought leader in coaching according to Thinkers360. Since September 2023, Zou has also been a consultant for WHO, focusing on leadership and mental health development for the organization’s executives.

Why organisations work with Darren Edwards He has led injured-veteran teams across four genuine world-first or world-record expeditions, including the 1,400 km Land’s End to John O’Groats kayak and the seven-continent World Marathon Challenge in a wheelchair. The leadership content is drawn from operations, not theory. He talks about the South Pole expedition that did not finish as openly as the ones that did, which gives senior teams a rare working example of how to make a collective stop call without losing the team. His book Strength Through Adversity, an Amazon UK bestseller, sets out the adaptive mindset framework he uses with leadership teams, giving audiences a single referenceable text after a session. He founded Adaptive Expeditions, so the work is institutional rather than personal narrative, and translates into language about team capability, not individual triumph. Biography highlights Author of Strength Through Adversity, Amazon UK bestseller, published February 2023. First wheelchair user to complete the World Marathon Challenge: seven marathons, seven continents, seven days. Led the first team to kayak 1,400 km from Land’s End to John O’Groats with injured-veteran crew. Member of the first adaptive team to cross Vatnajokull, Europe’s largest ice cap. Founder of Adaptive Expeditions. Former Army Reservist and qualified teacher. Biography A ledge gave way in North Wales in 2016. Darren Edwards fell more than 100 feet, broke his back in two places, and severed his spinal cord. He woke up paralysed from the chest down. He had been a mountaineer, an Army Reservist, and a trained teacher. None of those identities survived intact. What followed is the working material of his keynote. Inside three years he was leading a team of injured veterans on the first kayak crossing of Britain from Land’s End to John O’Groats, 1,400 kilometres through some of the country’s most exposed sea. He went on to row the English Channel, cross the Vatnajokull ice cap with the first adaptive team to do it, and in 2023 became the first wheelchair user to finish the World Marathon Challenge: seven marathons, seven continents, seven days. The expeditions are not the proof point. The proof point is what he did with them. He built Adaptive Expeditions as an organisation, wrote Strength Through Adversity in 2023, and has spent the years since refining what he calls the adaptive mindset: a working set of disciplines for leading teams through sustained uncertainty. How composure is built before it is needed. How recovery is led rather than waited out. How a team makes the call to stop. In December 2025 his Redefining Impossible team cut a 222 km sit-ski attempt on the South Pole short after a week on the ice. He talks about that decision with the same clarity as the records. For organisations under sustained pressure, that is the value. Edwards has lived the gap between the plan and what actually happens, and he can describe it in operational terms. Key speaking topics The adaptive mindset for leadership teams Leading through sustained uncertainty Team leadership across injured and mixed-ability crews Composure and decision-making under pressure Recovery as a leadership discipline Resilience after catastrophic disruption Ideal for Executive leadership teams preparing for or recovering from major disruption Senior operational leaders responsible for sustained-pressure environments Programmes for high-potential leaders building decision-making range Veteran transition, healthcare leadership, and emergency-services audiences Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about composure and recovery as leadership capabilities, not personality traits A clear example of how a senior team makes a collective stop decision without losing trust The adaptive mindset framework, drawn from his book, that audiences can take into team conversations after the session An honest account of the gap between the plan and the operation, useful for risk and contingency thinking

Meet George Randle George Randle is a seasoned talent executive, veteran, coach, and leader recognized for his ability to select, build, and restructure teams to achieve peak business performance. With over 20 years of experience in Fortune 100 and Fortune 1000 global Human Resources and Talent Acquisition, he has built and coached elite teams that deliver exceptional results. George began his professional journey by enlisting in the U.S. Army Reserves. During his service, he earned his bachelor’s degree from Missouri State University and was commissioned as an officer. His military career included assignments in Berlin, U.S. CENTCOM, and III Corps, with deployments to Africa (Somalia and Kenya), Central America, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After a distinguished military career, George transitioned to the corporate sector, facing many of the same challenges that Veterans encounter today. These experiences, coupled with his passion for building high-performing teams, led him to focus on Human Resources and Talent Acquisition. Over the past decade, George has served as a global HR executive and leader, guiding teams that have hired over 85,000 professionals, including more than 2,000 executives. He is also widely recognized for his decades of dedication to supporting veterans, having created one of the largest and most successful Veteran Hiring Programs for a Global Fortune 50 company. George is a Hogan (HPI, HDS, and MVPI) Leadership Assessment Certified coach who has helped numerous executives elevate their leadership skills. He is also the co-author of the best-selling book “The Talent War: How Special Operations and Great Organizations Win on Talent,” and co-host of The Talent War Podcast.

Why organisations work with Robert O’Neill Operation Neptune Spear is its own category in the speaker market. No other corporate keynoter has placed themselves on that target floor with public corroboration from the mission commander, Admiral William McRaven. Sixteen years inside elite US special operations, including a team leader role at the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, give audiences a concrete reference for what disciplined decision-making looks like when the cost of failure is absolute. Translates military operational frameworks into language that lands with senior commercial teams. Repeat bookings include sales conferences and leadership meetings at companies including Builders FirstSource, Ansys, GuideWell, and USHealth Advisors, with documented standing ovations. Substance behind the headline. Decorated 52 times, including two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars with Valor, three Presidential Unit Citations, and a Joint Service Commendation Medal with Valor. The record is independently documented through US Navy citations and verified press accounts. Biography highlights Sixteen years as a United States Navy SEAL (1996 to 2012). Retired at the rank of senior chief petty officer, having served as a team leader at the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), known as SEAL Team Six. Participated in Operation Neptune Spear in May 2011. Identified by mission commander Admiral William McRaven in a 2020 CNN interview as the SEAL who shot Osama bin Laden, an attribution disputed in some published accounts. Decorated 52 times, including two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars with Valor, three Presidential Unit Citations, and a Joint Service Commendation Medal with Valor. New York Times bestselling author of The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior (Simon & Schuster, 2017). Co-author with Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer of The Way Forward: Master Life’s Toughest Battles and Create Your Lasting Legacy (HarperCollins, 2021), a national bestseller. Co-founder of the Special Operators Transition Foundation (formerly Your Grateful Nation), supporting special operations veterans moving from active service into civilian careers. Biography Operation Neptune Spear had no margin for error. On 2 May 2011, a small Navy SEAL team flew into Abbottabad, Pakistan, to find Osama bin Laden. Robert O’Neill was the senior chief petty officer who walked up the stairs and engaged bin Laden in his bedroom. Mission commander Admiral William McRaven later identified him in a 2020 CNN interview as the SEAL who fired the shots, an attribution that other public accounts have disputed. The headline mission is one operation in a 16-year career inside the apex of US special operations. O’Neill enlisted in the Navy in 1996 and rose to team leader at the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known as DEVGRU. He held combat leadership roles in more than 400 missions across four theatres of war and was decorated 52 times. Among other operations, he was part of the team that supported the rescue of Marcus Luttrell in Afghanistan and the unit that freed Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates. For corporate audiences, the operational frame he carries matters more than the headline mission. He explains how teams that cannot afford to fail prepare, and how they decide when the cost of being wrong is absolute. His 2017 memoir, The Operator, was a New York Times bestseller and reads as a study of how a particular environment produces a particular kind of decision-maker. The Way Forward, co-written with Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer in 2021, takes the same material into the territory of personal performance and resilience. His corporate keynote work has reached audiences at Builders FirstSource, Ansys, GuideWell, and USHealth Advisors, among others. The substance he brings to those rooms is operational rather than motivational: how preparation and accountability function in environments where the cost of being wrong is absolute. Outside speaking, he co-founded the Special Operators Transition Foundation, which provides individualised support for special operations veterans moving into civilian careers. He served as a Fox News contributor from 2015 to 2021. Key speaking topics High-stakes decision-making Leadership under pressure Team performance in elite units Resilience and recovery Accountability in high-consequence environments Lessons from special operations Veteran transition to civilian leadership Ideal for Leadership conferences and senior management offsites where the agenda turns on decision-making in high-stakes situations Sales kickoffs and incentive events that need to galvanise commercial teams around accountability and execution Boards and executive teams preparing for transformation, crisis response, or other moments where the cost of being wrong is significant Veteran-focused organisations and events linked to special operations, defence, or military transition Audience outcomes A firsthand account of how elite military teams plan and decide when the cost of being wrong is absolute, drawn from named operations including the bin Laden raid. Working perspective on accountability and team trust, drawn from 16 years inside US special operations, that translates into commercial settings. A reference point for what high-stakes execution actually looks like, useful for teams about to enter a transformation or a launch they cannot get wrong. A galvanising opening or close to a major commercial event, supported by a track record of standing ovations from senior corporate audiences.

Meet Janine Hamner Holman Janine Hamner Holman is an internationally recognized speaker, bestselling author, and expert on what it takes to attract and retain world-class talent, organizational culture change and development, conscious leadership, leading in a virtual workplace, diversity equity inclusion & belonging (DEI&B), psychological safety at work, and emotional intelligence. As CEO of the J & J Consulting Group, Janine brings more than 30 years’ experience to the stage for her consulting, workshops, keynote speaking, and trainings. Janine uses scientifically validated strategies and tools to build high performance teams, enhance organizational functioning, and develop organizations and leaders with whom everyone wants to work. Janine spent 20 years in nonprofit leadership and then almost another decade working for a Fortune 200 company, where she had an opportunity to work closely with the public sector. This combination of nonprofit, for profit and public sector work conferred Janine with unique insights into how to effectively motivate people, their teams, and organizational leaders. After completing school at NYU where she double majored in English and Political Science, Janine has gone on to earn a Certification from Cornell University in the Psychology of Leadership, is a SHRM-CP and SHRM certified in Inclusive Cultures, is a Certified Partnership Practitioner, a Certified Practitioner in Emotional Intelligence, a Certified Coach, and a Certified Partner with Culture Talk. She is the author of the newly released book, Mind the Gap: Lessons in 21st Century Conscious Leadership, as well as a contributing author to the bestselling books Mission Matters: World’s Leading Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Top Tips To Success (Business Leaders Vol. 8, Edition 7) and On the Shoulders of Mighty Women. She is also host of the podcast, The Cost of Not Paying Attention.

Why organisations work with Ben Hines A signature programme, Know the Score, delivered with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and other professional ensembles, that puts senior leaders in the room with a world-class team operating in real time. Faculty appointments at Henley Business School and Korn Ferry International, anchoring the experiential work in a credible leadership development frame. Eighteen years in financial and legal services, including strategic marketing leadership at Barclays PLC, which keeps the corporate translation grounded rather than theatrical. A coaching credential (ACC, International Coach Federation) and a music degree from the University of York, sitting behind a method that other speakers cannot replicate. Biography highlights Founder of Moving Performance (2009), a leadership development firm using music and live musicians as the medium for senior team work. Creator of Know the Score, the first leadership programme to be developed in partnership with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Senior Associate faculty at Henley Business School, Korn Ferry International, and Altitude Leadership Partners. Associate Certified Coach, International Coach Federation. BA (Hons) Music, University of York. Earlier career as a strategic marketer at Barclays PLC and advisor to CPA Global. Biography A high-performing orchestra and a high-performing executive team face the same problem. Many specialists, one shared outcome, no rehearsal time. Most leadership development programmes describe that problem in abstract terms. Ben Hines puts it on a stage and lets leaders watch it solved in front of them. Moving Performance, the firm he founded in 2009, places professional musicians inside leadership sessions for serious organisations. The signature programme, Know the Score, runs in partnership with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and was the first leadership format developed with that orchestra. Senior teams observe how a group of experts coordinates without verbal instruction, then translate what they have seen into their own decision rhythms, listening habits, and roles under pressure. The credibility of the work rests on the corporate spine behind it. Eighteen years inside financial and legal services, including strategic marketing leadership at Barclays PLC across multiple international markets and an advisory role at CPA Global, sit underneath the musical method. Senior Associate faculty appointments at Henley Business School and Korn Ferry International, and an ACC coaching credential from the International Coach Federation, place the practice inside recognised leadership development infrastructure. Clients to date include Accenture, BP, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Borse, Jaguar Land Rover, PwC, Telekom Austria, Thames Water, and Wise. Key speaking topics High-performing teams Leadership and team development Change leadership Emotional intelligence in senior teams Communication and listening Executive presence Ideal for Chief Executives and executive committees running team off-sites and leadership conferences Heads of Leadership Development and CHROs commissioning senior team programmes Transformation leads using a leadership intervention to reset team behaviour during change Conference organisers needing a substantive keynote that doubles as a shared experience for the room Audience outcomes A common reference point for how an expert team coordinates without hierarchy interrupting the work Specific behavioural cues from professional musicians that translate into meeting and decision rhythms Sharper attention to listening, non-verbal signals, and timing in senior team interaction A shared experience the group keeps referring back to long after the session

Why organisations work with Jim Davidson Two decades inside a regulated, risk-driven scientific career sit behind the climbing stories, so the language of preparation, hazard analysis and recovery lands with operational, safety and engineering audiences who usually distrust adventure speakers. Two named, public disasters on his record, the 1992 Mount Rainier crevasse fall and the 2015 Everest earthquake at base camp, give him specific case material to teach from rather than generic survivor framing. Co-authored The Ledge won the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature, and The Next Everest is a published St. Martin’s Press title, so the underlying material is editorially vetted, not bureau copy. Twice recognised by the U.S. National Park Service for volunteer high-altitude rescues, which gives him a credible voice on team trust, mutual reliance and judgement at altitude that is hard to manufacture. Books to senior corporate audiences with a track record of named clients, including Marriott, National Geographic, UPS, Nationwide Insurance and the U.S. Army, so the room calibration is already proven across sectors. Biography highlights Co-author, The Ledge: An Inspirational Story of Friendship and Survival (Ballantine / Penguin Random House), with journalist Kevin Vaughan. Author, The Next Everest: Surviving the Mountain’s Deadliest Day and Finding the Resilience to Climb Again (St. Martin’s Press). Winner, 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature, for The Ledge. B.S. and M.S. in environmental geology; roughly 20 years as a practising environmental geologist before full-time speaking. Summited Mount Everest in 2017, two years after surviving the April 2015 Nepal earthquake at base camp. Recognised twice by the U.S. National Park Service for volunteer high-altitude rescue work in Colorado and Alaska. Biography A snowbridge collapsed under Jim Davidson on Mount Rainier in June 1992. He fell roughly 80 feet into a glacial crevasse with his climbing partner, Mike Price. Price did not come out. Davidson did, and spent the next 20 years working as an environmental geologist while quietly building the body of climbing experience that would later put him on Everest. That two-track career is the point. Davidson is not a climber who picked up a corporate vocabulary, he is a working scientist who spent two decades on industrial sites assessing oil and gasoline contamination, writing remediation plans and answering to regulators. The risk language he uses with executive audiences, hazard recognition, contingency design, post-incident learning comes from that work as much as from the mountains. The mountains supplied the case studies. Co-authored with journalist Kevin Vaughan, The Ledge took the Rainier accident through judgment, friendship and recovery and won the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature. The Next Everest, published by St. Martin’s Press, covers the 2015 Nepal earthquake, which struck while Davidson was on Everest, and his return to the summit in 2017. Both books are written, not ghosted around a brand. For corporate audiences, the value is specific. He has briefed Marriott, National Geographic, UPS, Nationwide Insurance and the U.S. Army on what disciplined teams actually do when the plan stops matching the terrain, drawn from rescues he has been part of and the U.S. National Park Service has formally recognised, twice. The talks work because the material is real, the science is honest about luck, and the decisions get named. Key speaking topics Resilience under pressure Decision-making in high-consequence environments Risk recognition and hazard preparation Team trust and mutual reliance Recovery after setback Leadership in crisis conditions Change and uncertainty Ideal for Senior leadership offsites where the agenda is preparation, recovery and judgment, not motivational storytelling. Safety, risk, engineering and operations functions in industries where consequence is physical, including energy, construction, utilities, life sciences and defence. Annual sales kickoffs and field-leader gatherings that need a credible non-business voice on resilience. HR and learning leaders are building a leadership programme around decision-making under uncertainty. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about hazard, judgement and recovery that doesn’t collapse into platitude. Two specific case studies, Mount Rainier 1992 and Everest 2015, are used as decision artefacts that the audience can argue with. A clearer separation between things a team can prepare for and things it can only respond to. Practical questions to take back into post-incident reviews, planning sessions and team debriefs. A sharper view of what trust between teammates is actually built from when the consequences are real.

Meet Pamela Barnum Imagine what it would be like to live as a different person with a different name, identity, and background. For months, you live with a false identity, and your success depends on building trust and detecting deception with some of the most dangerous people imaginable. That’s precisely what Pamela Barnum did for years while working undercover in the Drug Enforcement Section. She learned real-world techniques for building trust and interpreting body language. When Pamela graduated from law school, she left policing and accepted a position as a federal prosecuting attorney. She spent countless hours in the courtroom, perfecting her proficiency as a trust strategist and body language expert. Following a successful 20-year career in the criminal justice system, Pamela studied corporate negotiations in graduate school. Now, she shares her expertise with others, teaching them how to improve their communication skills to increase trust inside corporations, associations, and law enforcement agencies. She learned quickly how to separate fact from fiction and truth from falsehood. As a nonverbal communication expert and trust strategist, Pamela delivers techniques once thought of as a “secret second language” participants can begin using immediately. Take decades of experience in deep undercover work in narcotics and a successful legal career, and you get real-world strategies that help attendees crack the code on trust, improve professional relationships and increase effectiveness using proven field-tested techniques. Pamela shares her experience, research, and expertise with humor, candor, and energy, blending actionable strategies with memorable stories. She is also a featured expert and contributor in print media, radio, and television news programs in Canada and the United States. In addition, she has appeared in person before live and virtual audiences ranging from 50 – 12,000.