Team Leadership

Why organisations work with Serena Guthrie She has the rare credential of captaining a national team in the cycle immediately after its biggest win, with the specific leadership problem of defending a standard rather than chasing one. Her playing record is decided in the strongest leagues in the sport: Team Bath in England, Northern Mystics in New Zealand, Giants Netball in Australia, where she was named club MVP for the 2017 season. She speaks credibly about the captain’s role inside a high-performance system, including how a senior player holds a dressing room when the head coach is making selection calls that hurt teammates. An MBE for services to netball and a continuing role as Performance Lead at Jersey Netball mean her authority sits in current practice, not retired commentary. Biography highlights 110 senior caps for England; captain of the Vitality Roses from November 2018 to retirement in March 2022. Gold medal, 2018 Commonwealth Games, with the England Roses. Bronze, 2019 Netball World Cup, as captain. Three Netball World Cups (2011, 2015, 2019) and two Commonwealth Games (2014, 2018). Club career across the three strongest leagues in the sport: Team Bath, Northern Mystics, Giants Netball. Giants club MVP, 2017. MBE, 2020 New Year Honours, for services to netball. Performance Lead, Jersey Netball; founder of Legacy Netball; accredited executive coach; business coaching work with Humanise Solutions. Biography England had never won a major netball title before April 2018. When the Roses came home with Commonwealth gold, the team that had spent forty years finishing behind Australia and New Zealand was suddenly the one being chased. Seven months later, Serena Guthrie was named captain. The captaincy she took on was the difficult one. The first World Cup cycle after a defining win is the cycle in which a team has to prove the result was not a peak. Guthrie led the Roses to bronze at the 2019 World Cup in Liverpool under head coach Tracey Neville’s final campaign, and stayed in the role through the next three years of restructure, coaching change, and a pandemic that interrupted the international calendar. She retired in March 2022 with 110 caps and 28 as captain. Her club career sits alongside that international record. She played at Team Bath in the Vitality Netball Superleague, moved to Northern Mystics in New Zealand’s ANZ Premiership, and then to Giants Netball in Australia’s Suncorp Super Netball, the strongest domestic league in the sport, where she was named club MVP in her first season. That is a player who tested her standards in the environments her opponents came from. What she offers corporate audiences now is the substance of the captain’s role inside a high-performance system. She is direct about the gap between leading on the court and managing the room around selection decisions made by someone else; about how senior players hold standards when results turn; and about what defending a benchmark feels like compared with chasing one. Her current work as Performance Lead at Jersey Netball, founder of Legacy Netball, and an accredited executive coach with Humanise Solutions keeps that material in active practice. Key speaking topics Captaincy and senior leadership inside high-performance teams Holding standards after a defining win Team culture under public pressure and scrutiny Selection, accountability, and the senior player’s role Resilience and composure in decisive moments Talent development and the long arc of an elite career Ideal for Executive teams operating under the pressure to repeat or defend a recent result HR and talent leaders working on captaincy, succession, and senior player roles inside teams Women’s leadership programmes and senior development cohorts Sales and commercial leaders running through a defined competitive cycle Audience outcomes A concrete account of what a senior captain does inside a high-performance system when selection calls are not theirs to make A working reference point for holding team standards after a result everyone now expects you to repeat Honest perspective on the personal weight of leading peers, including senior teammates, through public results A usable model of long-career resilience across three of the most competitive leagues in a global sport

Why organisations work with Demi Stokes A first-hand voice from the England squad that won UEFA Women’s Euro 2022, the most commercially significant moment in English women’s football. Nine seasons at the top of the Women’s Super League with Manchester City, including a WSL title, three FA Cups and three League Cups, plus a return to first-team football after the premature birth of her son. A current player and Newcastle United captain, which gives event audiences access to a live insider perspective rather than a retrospective career story. A credible advocate on premature birth and neonatal care through her Pampers UK ambassadorship with Bliss and UNICEF, suited to wellbeing, parental-leave and ERG-focused events. Biography highlights Member of the England squad that won UEFA Women’s Euro 2022; 69 senior caps between 2014 and 2023. Won the FA Women’s Super League, three FA Women’s Cups and three League Cups with Manchester City between 2015 and 2024. Named in the PFA WSL Team of the Year in 2018 and 2019. Captained Team GB to gold at the 2013 Summer Universiade in Kazan and represented Team GB at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Signed for Newcastle United Women in July 2024 and named club captain ahead of the 2025/26 season. Pampers UK ambassador for the #PampersforPreemies campaign with Bliss and UNICEF. Biography Most elite athletes peak inside a single environment. Demi Stokes built her career across four of them. Sunderland gave her a first-team debut at sixteen and an FA Cup final in 2009. A scholarship to the University of South Florida added four years of US college football. A summer at Vancouver Whitecaps in the USL W League followed before Manchester City signed her in January 2015. What she built at City is the substance of the speaking story. Nine seasons, more than 100 first-team appearances, the 2016 FA WSL title, three FA Women’s Cups and three League Cups. Two PFA WSL Team of the Year selections, in 2018 and 2019. A senior England debut in 2014, and a place in the squad that won UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 at Wembley, the most commercially important moment in English women’s football. The personal layer runs alongside the career. Stokes was born ten weeks premature herself, and her son Harlen spent time in a neonatal unit after a difficult pregnancy that included pre-eclampsia. She has spoken openly about that period in interviews with Grazia and Mother & Baby, and works with Pampers UK on the #PampersforPreemies campaign in partnership with Bliss and UNICEF. The throughline that audiences hear is how a senior international footballer sustains performance through events that most workplaces still struggle to talk about. She left Manchester City in May 2024, signed for Newcastle United Women in July, and was named club captain ahead of the 2025/26 season. The story she brings to a room is current, not archived. Key speaking topics Lionesses and UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 Women’s football and the professionalisation of the game Return to elite performance after a difficult pregnancy Premature birth, neonatal care and family advocacy Leadership in a dressing room and team identity Long-career resilience across clubs, countries and codes Ideal for Internal events tied to International Women’s Day, parental-leave policy launches or working-parent ERGs. Wellbeing, EDI and culture programmes looking for a credible voice on resilience and identity rather than a clinical specialist. Sport-sponsorship activations, hospitality nights and awards dinners where a current Lioness presence is the brief. Audience outcomes An inside account of the England squad that won UEFA Women’s Euro 2022, told by a senior squad member. A direct view of how a top-flight athlete returns to performance after a high-risk pregnancy and a premature birth. A useable reference point for managers thinking about how to support employees through major personal events. A current-player perspective on dressing-room leadership and the demands of being a club captain.

Why organisations work with Dean Ashton A first-person account of how an elite career ends without warning, and what it takes to construct a credible second one from scratch in a watched, public arena. Direct experience of performing under scrutiny, from Premier League football and an FA Cup final to live broadcast on talkSPORT, Sky Sports, ITV and Quest, is useful to leaders whose own work has become more publicly observed. A grounded, unvarnished voice on mental health, injury and identity loss, drawn from being told at 26 that the work he had trained his life for was over. An after-dinner presence that lifts the energy of a room, with material a sports-literate UK audience recognises immediately: Crewe academy, Norwich, the £7.25m move to West Ham, the 2006 cup final, the England debut against Trinidad & Tobago. Biography highlights Capped by England at the senior level; made his debut against Trinidad & Tobago on 1 June 2008. Signed by West Ham United from Norwich City in January 2006 for a then club-record £7.25m fee. Scored in the 3-3 FA Cup final against Liverpool in May 2006. Career ended in December 2009 at age 26 following a long-term ankle injury sustained in England training in August 2006. Product of the Crewe Alexandra academy under Dario Gradi; scored 74 goals in 177 appearances for the club. Now a pundit and co-commentator across talkSPORT, Sky Sports, ITV, Premier League TV and The EFL Show on Quest. Biography Ashton was a £7.25m centre-forward, an FA Cup final scorer, and an England international by the time he was 24. By 26, he was retired. The ankle injury sustained in an England training session in August 2006 never fully healed, and in December 2009, West Ham confirmed publicly what he had been trying to outrun for three years. The interesting part of the story for organisations is what came next. The default path for a player in that position is a quiet drift out of public life. Ashton instead built a second career inside the same scrutiny he had been performing in as a player, this time as a broadcaster, working as a pundit and co-commentator across talkSPORT, Sky Sports, ITV, Premier League TV and The EFL Show on Quest. That arc is the substance of his speaking work. The material is not abstract resilience theory. It is a specific account of identity loss at 26, the practical mechanics of rebuilding professional credibility in a new field, and the discipline of performing under live scrutiny when the result is judged in public. He talks honestly about mental health, public pressure and the version of yourself you have to construct when the original plan is gone. For a UK corporate audience, Ashton sits at the intersection of after-dinner sports speaker and credible voice on dealing with career shock. The football material gives the room an immediate point of entry. The reinvention material is what a leadership audience actually takes away. Key speaking topics Resilience after career-ending shock Reinvention and second careers Performing under public scrutiny Mental health and identity in elite performance environments Team culture and high performance in professional sport After-dinner sports speaking and Premier League punditry Ideal for HR, leadership and wellbeing conferences where the brief calls for an honest first-person voice on resilience and mental health. Sales kick-offs, awards dinners and partner events are looking for a UK sports-literate after-dinner speaker with substance behind the anecdotes. Internal leadership offsites addressing change fatigue, role loss after restructure, or the reset that follows a strategic shock. Audience outcomes A grounded sense of what resilience looks like in practice when the original plan is no longer available. A more honest internal vocabulary for talking about mental health, identity and pressure at senior levels. A reference point for thinking about career reinvention as a deliberate, constructed process rather than a recovery story. An engaged, sports-literate room, set up well for the rest of the agenda.

Why organisations work with Perry McCarthy He brings a first-person account of operating inside a Formula One team that was actively working against its own driver, including being sent out at Spa with a broken steering component pulled from his teammate’s car. The lesson lands because the stakes were physical. His route into F1 ran through fourteen-hour shifts on North Sea oil rigs to fund the seat. Audiences hearing about resilience from him are hearing it from someone who priced it. The Stig role gives him a cultural hook into rooms that would not normally book a motorsport speaker, which makes him a strong choice for sales conferences, kick-offs, and after-dinner slots that need energy without losing substance. He is a working media commentator on Sky News and BBC News, not a retired driver reading off a script. The delivery is current and the timing is built for live audiences. Biography highlights Drove for Andrea Moda Formula in the 1992 Formula One World Championship. Tested for Williams and Benetton F1 teams. Competed at the 24 Hours of Le Mans on five occasions between 1996 and 2003. Original black-suited Stig on BBC’s Top Gear across the first two series. Author of “Flat Out, Flat Broke: Formula 1 the Hard Way!” (2002), with a foreword by Damon Hill. Regular motorsport contributor on Sky News and BBC News. Biography Reaching Formula One as a privateer is a financial problem before it is a sporting one. McCarthy worked fourteen-hour shifts on North Sea oil rigs to fund his junior career, then arrived at the 1992 world championship with Andrea Moda Formula, a team owned by an Italian shoe businessman that was, by any honest reading, set up to fail. He never made the grid. He also never crashed the car, which at one point was sent out at Spa with a broken steering component lifted from his teammate’s car. What he did get from that season was a working knowledge of how to keep operating when the people around you are not. He went on to test for Williams and Benetton, then built a career in sports cars that included five appearances at the 24 Hours of Le Mans between 1996 and 2003. In 2002, a chance meeting with Jeremy Clarkson at the launch of his autobiography “Flat Out, Flat Broke” led to the role that made him recognisable outside motorsport. He was the original Stig on BBC’s Top Gear, the black-suited version, across the first two series. His identity was exposed by a Sunday newspaper in early 2003. The speaking work is built on the same material. Damon Hill’s line about him still travels: “I have constant admiration on how he turns a no hope situation into some sort of triumph.” For a corporate audience, that is the asset. McCarthy can describe, with specifics, what it takes to keep performing when the equipment is wrong, the support is missing, and the result is no longer in your hands. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Resilience and recovery from setback Self-leadership in hostile conditions Team performance and trust Risk and decision-making Motorsport as a business analogy Ideal for Sales conferences and annual kick-offs needing high-energy keynote opening or close After-dinner audiences at corporate hospitality, awards, and partner events Leadership offsites focused on composure and persistence under pressure Automotive, motorsport-adjacent, and engineering brand events Audience outcomes A vivid, first-person account of operating inside a Formula One team that was actively against its own driver A practical reframe of resilience as a daily working habit rather than a slogan The cultural payoff of hearing the Top Gear Stig story directly from the original Stig Energy and humour that sets the tone for the rest of the agenda

Why organisations work with Nicole Vignola She brings a credentialed neuroscience grounding, BSc Neuroscience and MSc Organisational Psychology, into a field where most wellbeing speakers operate from lived experience alone. Her work translates synaptic plasticity and stress physiology into specific behavioural routines that managers and teams can run during a working week. Rewire (Penguin Michael Joseph UK, Harper One US) has been licensed into more than a dozen territories, giving her published intellectual property that buyers can read before booking. Her client base spans regulated finance, consulting and consumer brands: Lloyds Banking Group, Deloitte, PwC, Maker’s Mark, Smeg, Ultraleap, UCLA. The same material lands in very different operating cultures. The Mental Currency Method, her signature framework now under contract with Hay House, gives organisations a named system rather than a one-off talk. Biography highlights BSc Neuroscience, University of Bristol. MSc Organisational Psychology, University of the West of England. Author of Rewire: Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts and Create Lasting Change, Penguin Michael Joseph (UK) and Harper One (US), with more than a dozen translation deals. Forthcoming book with Hay House built around her Mental Currency Method framework. Corporate clients include Lloyds Banking Group, Deloitte, PwC, Maker’s Mark, Smeg, Ultraleap and UCLA. Named “Instagram’s favourite brain expert” by Women’s Health magazine. Runs a large public platform across Instagram, YouTube and Substack used by general audiences and corporate L&D teams. Biography Wellbeing budgets have grown faster than wellbeing outcomes. Stress, sleep debt and decision fatigue keep showing up in engagement data even after the resilience workshop has run. The reason is biological. Telling people to manage stress does not change the neural circuitry that drives habit, attention and recovery. Behaviour change does. Nicole Vignola works in exactly that gap. With a BSc in Neuroscience from Bristol and an MSc in Organisational Psychology from the University of the West of England, she translates synaptic plasticity, dopamine regulation and stress physiology into routines that fit a working day. The material is grounded in published neuroscience, not borrowed metaphor. Her book Rewire, published by Penguin Michael Joseph in the UK and Harper One in the US, sets out the operating principles. It has been licensed into more than a dozen territories and is widely used by readers outside corporate audiences, which gives her platform unusual reach for a workplace specialist. A second book with Hay House extends the same logic into the Mental Currency Method, her signature framework. In corporate work she has been used by Lloyds Banking Group, Deloitte, PwC, Maker’s Mark, Smeg, Ultraleap and UCLA, organisations with very different cultures and stress profiles. That breadth matters. It shows the material survives translation from a consumer brand to a regulated bank and still produces specific changes in how teams handle workload, recovery and decisions under pressure. Key speaking topics Behaviour change and neuroplasticity at work Decision-making under pressure Stress physiology and recovery Mental performance and focus Workplace wellbeing as a strategic capability Habit formation in high-performing teams Ideal for CHROs, heads of people and L&D leaders designing the next wellbeing strategy Senior leadership teams in regulated and high-load industries: finance, consulting, professional services Heads of talent and engagement looking for substance beyond awareness campaigns Sales, trading and operations leaders whose teams work under sustained cognitive pressure Audience outcomes A working understanding of how habits and stress responses are biologically formed and changed Specific behavioural routines for focus, recovery and decision quality during the working day Sharper language for distinguishing wellbeing theatre from interventions that change behaviour A clearer view of where neuroscience-grounded practice fits inside a broader people strategy

Why organisations work with Tom Morley A participatory format that gets reserved, senior or fatigued audiences playing, listening and coordinating with each other inside ten minutes, not after a day of icebreakers. Twenty-five years of delivery for Vodafone, Disney, GSK, Hertz, Nokia, Cisco, Adecco and Johnson & Johnson across New York, Moscow, Johannesburg, Istanbul, Paris and London. A working artist’s read of group energy, drawn from a career on stage with Scritti Politti and studio work with David Bowie and Madness, applied to the dynamics inside a leadership offsite. A facilitation method, the 7-Step REMIX Process, that translates the in-room experience into language teams can use back at their desks the following week. Biography highlights Founder member and original drummer of Scritti Politti, the DIY-to-pop band of the 1980s. Studio and live collaborator with David Bowie and Madness. Founder of Instant Teamwork (1999), an arts-based team-building company operating internationally. Corporate clients include Vodafone, Disney, GSK, Hertz, Nokia, Cisco, Adecco and Johnson & Johnson. Author of the 7-Step REMIX Process, a personal development framework adapted from the “More To Life” programme. Charitable work for Teenage Cancer Trust, Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital, MENCAP, Save the Children, UN Women UK and Peace One Day. Biography A power-cut hit the stage during a Scritti Politti show in Berlin. Morley kept the beat going and started a vocal call-and-response with the audience. That moment, in which a room of strangers held a groove together without any technology, became the seed for Instant Teamwork, the arts-based team-building company he founded in 1999. The premise is straightforward. Trust, candour and coordination cannot be lectured into a team. They have to be experienced first, then named. Morley uses live drumming and call-and-response to put a group into a shared rhythm fast, then debriefs what just happened in terms the room can take back to work. The musical credibility is real. He was a founder member of Scritti Politti, recorded with David Bowie and performed live with Madness. The corporate work has had time to develop a method. Vodafone, Disney, GSK, Hertz, Nokia, Cisco, Adecco and Johnson & Johnson have used Instant Teamwork sessions in New York, Moscow, Johannesburg, Istanbul, Paris and London over more than two decades. Around the facilitation sits the 7-Step REMIX Process, adapted from his work with Dr K. Bradford Brown of the “More To Life” programme. It is the language Morley uses to make a participatory session repeatable for teams once the drums are gone. Key speaking topics Team cohesion and group energy Engagement and participation in hybrid teams Creativity and improvisation under pressure Communication and call-and-response as a team behaviour Motivation and collective performance Risk-taking and breaking hierarchical silos Ideal for Annual conferences and leadership offsites that need a high-energy participatory anchor HR and culture leads rebuilding engagement after restructure or remote-working fatigue Sales kick-offs and reward events looking for a shared experience rather than a panel Senior leadership groups doing trust and communication work as part of an away-day Audience outcomes An experience of collective rhythm and coordination that members of the room produced together A felt sense of how quickly a reserved group can become participatory when the format invites it A shared reference point, the session itself, that the team can call back to in meetings afterwards Language from the REMIX framework for talking about creative risk and group communication A reset on the relationship between energy in the room and decisions made later

Why organisations work with Kyle and Brent Pease They are the first push-assist brother duo in history to finish the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, a fact every audience can verify and few will forget. Their work is operational, not symbolic. The Kyle Pease Foundation has supported hundreds of adaptive athletes, run inclusive employment programmes, and raised over $12 million in cumulative funding. They speak as one unit, not a panel. The dynamic between Kyle and Brent is the content. Audiences see what shared accountability looks like at the level of muscle memory. The “Invisible Wheelchair” frame gives leaders a usable shorthand for the unseen constraints colleagues carry, without the political weight that has stalled mainstream DEI conversations. Biography highlights First push-assist brother duo to complete the IRONMAN World Championship, Kona 2018. Six IRONMAN finishes together, with 100+ endurance races as a push-assist team. Co-authors of “Beyond the Finish” (Mascot Books, 2019), a dual-perspective memoir. Co-founders of The Kyle Pease Foundation, supporting adaptive athletes and inclusive employment in Atlanta and nationally. Subjects of a Hyundai Motor America six-part documentary series chronicling their road to Kona. Kyle holds a Sport Management degree from Kennesaw State University; Brent is a Florida State University graduate and certified endurance coach. Biography The Kona finish line in October 2018 was the first time two brothers had crossed it together as a push-assist duo. Brent had towed Kyle through 2.4 miles of open water in an inflatable kayak, pedalled 112 miles with Kyle reclined ahead of him on the bike, and pushed Kyle in a racing wheelchair through a 26.2-mile marathon in volcanic heat. The crossing was sport history. It was also the clearest public demonstration of a working relationship most organisations claim to want and few build. Kyle Pease was born with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. He went on to earn a Sport Management degree from Kennesaw State University and now serves as Chief Inspirational Officer at The Kyle Pease Foundation. Brent, a Florida State University graduate and certified endurance coach, is the Foundation’s Executive Director. Together they have completed more than one hundred races and built a 501(c)(3) that supports adaptive athletes, funds adaptive equipment, and runs inclusive employment programmes. Cumulative fundraising sits above $12 million. Their keynote work draws on the same partnership the race made visible. The Invisible Wheelchair frame asks leaders to recognise constraints that colleagues carry without announcement. Find Your Finish reframes goal-setting around the conditions a team controls rather than the times on the clock. Together We Wheel makes the case that shared accountability is a behavioural practice, not a values statement. Their book “Beyond the Finish” (Mascot Books, 2019) tells both sides of the story in alternating voices. For organisations rebuilding trust after restructure, threading inclusion through a fatigued workforce, or anchoring a leadership event in something the room will actually remember, the brothers offer a working example of two people producing a result neither could produce alone. The proof is on the Kona course tape. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained physical and operational constraint Inclusive leadership in practice, not policy Shared accountability and team interdependence Goal-setting beyond performance metrics Adaptive sport, disability advocacy, and the case for adaptive employment Brotherhood, partnership, and trust under load Ideal for All-hands and town hall events where leadership wants the room to leave changed, not briefed Leadership offsites focused on resilience, team trust, or inclusion behaviours Sales kickoffs and annual conferences seeking an anchor keynote with high recall Employee resource group summits, particularly disability ERGs, and culture-change moments inside large organisations Audience outcomes A vocabulary for the unseen constraints colleagues carry, usable in everyday team conversations A reframing of resilience as a shared behaviour rather than an individual trait A vivid reference point for what real partnership looks like when failure is not an option A renewed sense of why inclusion matters in operational terms, beyond compliance framing

Why organisations work with JJ Birden He translates a specific professional discipline, NFL receiver preparation, into a six-step execution model that sales leaders can actually run their teams against, not a general motivation talk. He is a credible voice on long-odds performance. At 5’10” and 157 pounds across nine NFL seasons, his career itself is the case study for the content he delivers. He is built for sales kickoffs and field events. Buyers consistently book him for national sales meetings where the brief is energy plus a usable framework, not abstract leadership theory. He is the author of When Opportunity Knocks: 8 Surefire Ways to Take Advantage, which gives sales and franchise audiences a take-home structure beyond the keynote itself. Biography highlights Nine NFL seasons, 1988 to 1996, with Cleveland Browns, Kansas City Chiefs, and Atlanta Falcons; 244 career receptions, 3,441 yards, 17 touchdowns. 8th round pick in the 1988 NFL Draft, 216th overall. Member of the University of Oregon 1985 NCAA Championship Track and Field team; inducted into the University of Oregon Athletic Hall of Fame in 2010. Pac-10 long jump champion in 1988 and qualifier for the 1988 US Olympic Trials in the long jump. Author of When Opportunity Knocks: 8 Surefire Ways to Take Advantage. Keynote client list across bureau records includes Bank of America, Aflac, Hershey, Orangetheory Fitness, Arrow Electronics, Merrill Lynch, MassMutual, Pearle Vision, and O’Reilly Auto Parts. Biography The average NFL career lasts roughly three seasons. JJ Birden played nine, at 5’10” and 157 pounds, in a position where every other receiver on the field was bigger and faster on paper. That gap between physical odds and sustained output is the substance of what he now teaches. He came into the league as an 8th round pick of the Cleveland Browns in 1988, the same year he won the Pac-10 long jump title at Oregon and qualified for the US Olympic Trials. Five seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs, two with Atlanta, and a final receiving line of 244 catches for 3,441 yards and 17 touchdowns followed. What Birden built after football is a translation of receiver preparation into business execution. The six-step Beat the Coverage frame runs from reading the field through finding the gap, playing to strengths, drawing the plan, building the reps, and executing under pressure. It is a sales kickoff framework dressed in a playbook, not a motivational metaphor. He is a University of Oregon Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, author of When Opportunity Knocks: 8 Surefire Ways to Take Advantage, and a recurring keynote at national sales meetings for organisations including Aflac, Hershey, Bank of America, Orangetheory Fitness, and O’Reilly Auto Parts. Buyers book him when the brief is execution discipline and competitive intensity for a field audience. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Individual accountability in team environments Opportunity recognition and execution Sales team motivation and discipline Resilience and long-odds performance Preparation as a competitive variable Ideal for Sales leaders running national or regional kickoff meetings Field and franchise organisations under quarterly performance pressure Leadership audiences who want execution content rather than strategy content Athletic and high-performance programmes Audience outcomes A six-step playbook (Beat the Coverage) that sales managers can apply against specific accounts and pipeline stages A sharper read on where preparation actually drives results, separate from talent and circumstance Permission to compete from a disadvantaged position without treating it as a story about disadvantage A direct frame for individual accountability inside teams that have plateaued

Why organisations work with Tanya Menon A research voice on inclusion that starts with network structure, hiring data, and decision bias rather than identity language, useful for leadership teams that need substance under a contested topic. Tenured academic credibility: Stanford PhD, Fisher College professorship, Associate Editor at Management Science, a decade teaching Power and Influence at Chicago Booth. Co-author of Stop Spending, Start Managing (Harvard Business Review Press), which names five specific organisational traps including expertise lock-in and conflict avoidance, applied directly to senior team behaviour. A TED Talk with 1.8 million-plus views that translates weak-tie network research into a behaviour senior leaders and their teams can immediately recognise in themselves. Equally fluent on team performance, persuasion, and hiring, which makes her a credible single speaker across an HR or culture programme rather than one topic in a series. Biography highlights Professor of Management and Human Resources, Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University. PhD, Stanford Graduate School of Business; BA, Harvard University. Associate Editor, Management Science. Co-author, Stop Spending, Start Managing: Strategies to Transform Wasteful Habits, Harvard Business Review Press. TED Talk listed among TED.com’s most popular of 2018, with over 1.8 million views. Faculty for over a decade at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, teaching Power and Influence. Research cited in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Guardian, The Times of London, Chicago Tribune, and Boston Globe. Biography Most senior teams know who they talk to every day. Far fewer can name who they have stopped talking to, and what that has cost the organisation. Tanya Menon’s research starts in that gap. Her work at Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business, supported by a Stanford PhD and a decade teaching at Chicago Booth, focuses on how relationships at work shape decisions, hiring, and innovation. Her TED Talk, “The secret to great opportunities? The person you haven’t met yet,” reframes networking as a structural problem rather than a personal one. Drawing on Mark Granovetter’s classic work on weak ties, she shows why the routines that feel efficient inside an organisation quietly narrow the people, ideas, and candidates a leader ever encounters. Over 1.8 million people have watched it. With Leigh Thompson of Kellogg, she wrote Stop Spending, Start Managing for Harvard Business Review Press. The book identifies five concrete traps, including the Expertise Trap, the Winner’s Trap, and the Agreement Trap, that explain why competent teams burn time and money on the wrong problems. It is built for leaders who run real teams, not for a general management audience. She has been an Associate Editor at Management Science, and her research has been cited by The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Guardian, The Times of London, the Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe. The through-line is a usable diagnostic vocabulary for the parts of organisational life that look like soft skills until they start producing hard losses. Key speaking topics Networks and weak ties at work Inclusion through hiring and network design Team decision-making and productive conflict Power, persuasion, and influence Innovation and pattern-breaking Wasteful organisational habits and managerial traps AI and human decision-making in hiring Ideal for CHROs and Heads of Talent rethinking hiring pipelines and selection bias. Heads of DEI and culture leaders looking for a research-led, non-ideological frame for inclusion. Senior leadership teams under pressure to improve cross-functional collaboration. Learning and development leads designing executive programmes on influence, networks, and team performance. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the network and hiring habits that quietly limit inclusion and innovation. Five named organisational traps senior teams can test their own behaviour against. A research-grounded view of weak ties as a hiring, learning, and idea-generation lever. Specific tactics for breaking routine social patterns inside large organisations. A more defensible inclusion narrative grounded in network structure and decision data.

Why organisations work with Dominic Inglot He competed at the highest level of doubles tennis, a discipline that is structurally about two people making correct decisions together in real time under crowd, ranking, and result pressure. That experience translates directly to leadership pairs and small executive teams. He sat inside Great Britain’s 2015 Davis Cup squad, the country’s first title in 79 years, and can speak first-hand to what a team does in the weeks and minutes before a result that has eluded the institution for a generation. Eighteen years on the ATP tour, including Grand Slam semi-finals at the US Open and Wimbledon and an Olympic appearance, gives him a long-arc view on sustained performance, loss of form, and how players rebuild after defeats that would end most careers. His post-tennis work as a BBC and ATP commentator means he reads competitive performance for a living; he is unusually articulate about what is happening inside a match, which gives the keynote substance beyond the personal narrative. Biography highlights Career-high doubles ranking of World No. 18; former British No. 1 in doubles. 14 ATP Tour doubles titles, including Citi Open and Swiss Indoors; 27 ATP finals across an 18-year professional career. Member of the 2015 Great Britain Davis Cup winning squad; awarded BBC Sports Personality Team of the Year. Grand Slam doubles semi-finalist at the 2015 US Open and 2018 Wimbledon; three Australian Open quarter-finals. 2016 Rio Olympian for Team GB in men’s doubles. University of Virginia Finance graduate; 2009 NCAA Men’s Doubles Champion. Tennis commentator for BBC at Wimbledon and for the ATP and WTA world feeds. Biography Great Britain had not won the Davis Cup in seventy-nine years when the 2015 squad arrived in Ghent for the final against Belgium. Inglot was part of that squad. The team won. That fact frames everything else about what he brings to a corporate audience, because the interesting question is not the win, it is the eleven months of preparation, the weight of expectation, and the daily decisions inside a small group of people that produced it. The wider career sits alongside that moment as proof. World No. 18 in doubles, fourteen ATP titles, semi-finals at the US Open and Wimbledon, an Olympic appearance in Rio. Doubles, more than singles, is the closest sporting analogue to a senior executive pair: two people, complementary skills, real-time decisions, no time to caucus. The discipline of that partnership is what he speaks to. Since retiring in 2022, Inglot has worked as a commentator for BBC at Wimbledon and for the ATP and WTA world feeds. That second career matters here because he reads performance for a living. He is articulate about what composure looks like from the outside, what trust between teammates actually consists of in the seconds before a critical point, and why some players keep deciding when the result is uncertain while others stop. His University of Virginia Finance degree and NCAA doubles title sit at the start of the story rather than the end. The argument is not that elite sport is a metaphor for business. It is that elite sport is one of the few environments where the qualities leadership development tries to teach are stress-tested in public every week, and a leader can learn from watching them tested. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Team trust and partnership Decision-making in real time Career transition and reinvention Resilience after setback Mental discipline in elite sport Lessons from doubles tennis for leadership pairs Ideal for Executive teams and leadership pairs whose effectiveness depends on real-time decisions and trust under pressure. Sales leadership and commercial teams approaching a high-stakes period (year-end, pitch, transaction close). Corporate offsites, annual conferences, and Davis Cup or Wimbledon hospitality activations. After-dinner audiences at industry events where a strong personal story carries the room. Audience outcomes A concrete picture of what composure looks like under genuine pressure, drawn from inside a Davis Cup campaign. A working language for how trust between two senior people is built and tested in real time. A view of career transition that does not flatten the difficulty of leaving a defining identity behind. A renewed standard for what high performance asks of preparation, not only execution.

Why organisations work with Andreas Kuffner He has lived the precise problem most leadership teams describe in abstract terms: eight people, one boat, no room for individual heroics, sixteen years of preparation collapsing or holding in a six-minute window. That is the case he draws on, not a metaphor for it. He pairs that experience with a formal systemic coaching practice (ECA-certified) and a master’s in business engineering, so the language he uses with executives is operational, not inspirational. He works inside corporate change programmes at Allianz, Bayer, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa, Nestle and PwC, advising on team coherence and resilience rather than delivering one-off motivational sets. His framing of resilience is specific: coherence between meaning, self-efficacy and belonging, sustained when results stop confirming the strategy. That is a working model leaders can act on, not a slogan. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, men’s eight, London 2012, ending a 24-year German drought in the event Olympic silver medallist, men’s eight, Rio 2016 World champion, men’s eight, Bled 2011; European champion 2014 Recipient of the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt, Germany’s highest sporting honour, awarded twice Certified systemic personal and business coach (European Coaching Association) Master’s degree in business engineering, completed while competing at elite level Advises corporate clients including Allianz, Bayer, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa, Nestle and PwC Biography The German eight had not won Olympic gold for 24 years before the crew Kuffner rowed in took the title in London in 2012. Four years later, the same boat took silver in Rio. The interesting fact is not the medal count. It is what an eight-person crew has to do, technically and psychologically, to put six minutes of synchronised output on the water when one micro-deviation ends the race. That problem is closer to what senior leadership teams face than the usual sports-keynote framing suggests. Coherence under pressure is a measurable thing, not a mood. It can be designed, rehearsed and rebuilt when it breaks. Kuffner spent 16 years inside that discipline at the highest level, and he now works with corporate teams on the same mechanics. His credentials outside the boat matter for that reason. A master’s degree in business engineering, completed alongside Olympic training. Certification as a systemic personal and business coach through the European Coaching Association. Active consulting work with Allianz, Bayer, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa, Nestle and PwC on team development, change and resilience. The vocabulary is operational, and the engagements run beyond the stage. What he offers a leadership team is a working language for performance that does not collapse the first time results turn against the strategy. Resilience as a structural property of how a team is held together, not a personal virtue. That is the conversation a boardroom needs when the next quarter looks harder than the last. Key speaking topics Resilience and team coherence under sustained pressure High-performance team development Leadership through change and setback Composure and decision-making in elite environments Building trust and collective discipline in senior teams Corporate culture and value creation Ideal for Executive committees and senior leadership teams navigating restructure or sustained performance pressure CHROs and people leaders rebuilding team trust after acquisition, reorganisation or repeated change cycles Boards and operating committees seeking a working model of team coherence rather than a motivational input Audience outcomes A specific working model of team coherence drawn from elite rowing and applied to corporate operating teams A clearer view of resilience as a structural condition of the team, not a personality trait of its members Concrete language for how meaning, self-efficacy and belonging hold performance together when results turn A frame for distinguishing motivation from discipline in how leaders respond to setbacks

Why organisations work with Sebastian Wachter He arrives in a wheelchair with a Master’s in business mathematics, a career as a stock analyst, and a Bundesliga rugby record. The audience cannot file his argument under inspirational story and move on. His thesis, set out in Change Mindset (BoD, 2020) and excerpted in WirtschaftsWoche, treats change resistance as a managerial problem with named mechanisms, not a motivational gap. He won the European Speaker Award 2019 in front of a jury drawn from Daimler, Lufthansa and Siemens, which is the buyer profile that commissions him. He works fluently in German and English, which matters for DACH-region corporates running cross-border transformation programmes. Biography highlights Master of Science in Business Mathematics, with an exchange semester at the University of Texas at Austin. Former stock analyst in a private bank before founding Barrierefrei im Kopf UG. Bundesliga wheelchair rugby player with German national team experience. Author of Change Mindset: Veranderungsprozesse ins Rollen bringen! (BoD, 2020), with a chapter excerpt carried by WirtschaftsWoche’s Management-Blog. Winner of the European Speaker Award 2019. Television and radio appearances on ARD, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Radio Gong and SWR’s Nachtcafe. Biography Most change programmes do not fail at the design stage. They fail at the moment when the people inside the organisation decide, often quietly, that the new direction is something happening to them rather than something they own. This is the gap Sebastian Wachter writes about and the gap his keynotes are designed to close. His own credibility on the subject is mathematical before it is motivational. He holds a Master of Science in Business Mathematics, spent an exchange semester at the University of Texas at Austin, and worked as a stock analyst in a private bank. The accident that left him with roughly 95% muscle paralysis came at 24, after the analytical training, not before it. He treats change as a managerial problem with mechanisms, not a feel-good lesson drawn from biography. That argument is set out in Change Mindset: Veranderungsprozesse ins Rollen bringen!, published in 2020 and excerpted in WirtschaftsWoche’s Management-Blog. The book reframes change resistance as a question of accountability, role clarity and the willingness of senior managers to keep asking for help once the plan is signed off. The European Speaker Award 2019, judged by representatives from Daimler, Lufthansa and Siemens, recognised the same content in keynote form. He works in German and English, founded the Wurzburg-based firm Barrierefrei im Kopf UG, and continues to play Bundesliga wheelchair rugby. The work he is booked for sits at the point where a transformation programme has stalled and the executive team needs the workforce to re-engage on its own terms. Key speaking topics Change mindset and stalled transformation programmes Growth mindset and managerial resilience Diversity and inclusion in the workforce Team accountability and role clarity Resilience after personal and organisational setback Communication and collaboration across functions Ideal for Executive teams and transformation leads running multi-year change programmes that have lost momentum DACH-region corporates with mixed German- and English-speaking audiences HR directors and culture leads addressing inclusion and engagement together Leadership offsites where the brief is to reset accountability across senior managers Audience outcomes A working definition of why change programmes stall at the point of behavioural commitment, not strategic design. A vocabulary for separating constraint from excuse inside a leadership team. A concrete account of how role clarity, accountability and asking for help operate together in change execution. A different reference point for what resilience looks like in practice, drawn from a verifiable biographical record rather than abstraction.