Values-Based Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with Simon Sinek The Golden Circle gives leadership teams a named, diagrammatic model for examining whether their communication and strategy starts from purpose or defaults to product; concrete enough to run a board session around, not just a concept to absorb from a stage. The Infinite Game framework reframes how organisations think about competition: the argument that most organisations are playing a finite game in an inherently infinite one gives senior leaders a precise diagnostic for why short-termism is corroding their culture and decision-making. His work on the Circle of Safety – drawn from military and organisational research – gives leaders a specific language and accountability structure for psychological safety, distinguishing it from vague “culture” conversations. Three consecutive Thinkers50 appearances (2017, 2019, 2021), including the Future Thinker award, position him inside the recognised canon of serious management thinking – relevant where senior buyers are evaluating credibility, not just popularity. His reach into the US Armed Forces, the United Nations, and the US Congress alongside global corporate work gives his frameworks a cross-sector validation that most leadership speakers cannot match. Biography highlights Author of five books on leadership and purpose, including Start with Why (global bestseller, over one million copies sold in the US alone), Leaders Eat Last (New York Times bestseller), and The Infinite Game (New York Times bestseller); published by Portfolio/Penguin and Penguin Random House Creator of the Golden Circle framework, one of the most widely adopted models in leadership communication and organisational purpose TED Talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” (2009) is the third most-watched talk on TED.com, with over 60 million views Named to the Thinkers50 ranking three consecutive times (2017, 2019, 2021); recipient of the Thinkers50 Future Thinker Award Adjunct staff member, RAND Corporation (since 2010); former instructor in Strategic Communications, Columbia University Founder of The Optimism Company, a leadership learning and development platform, and Optimism Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House; has spoken at the United Nations, US Congress, and across senior US military leadership Biography Most leadership conversations begin in the wrong place. They start with what an organisation does or how it does it – and never reach the question that actually determines whether people are engaged, aligned, and willing to give discretionary effort: why. The inability to answer that question convincingly is not a branding gap; it is a leadership gap, and Simon Sinek has built one of the most recognised frameworks in contemporary management thinking to address it. His Golden Circle model – introduced in Start with Why (2009) and subsequently the subject of the third most-watched TED Talk in history – provides organisations with a structured means of diagnosing whether their leadership, communication, and strategy is purpose-led or merely product-led. The argument is grounded in the biology of decision-making: people do not respond primarily to logic and features, but to belief and identity. The practical implication for leadership is significant, and it is why the framework has moved from conference rooms into board strategy sessions, culture programmes, and military leadership curricula. His later work extends the argument. The Infinite Game (2019, New York Times bestseller) identifies a structural problem in how most organisations compete: treating an inherently infinite game – business, leadership, institutional relevance – as if it has a finish line. Leaders operating with a finite mindset optimise for short-term metrics and burn through the trust, culture, and purpose that actually determine longevity. This is not motivational language; it is a specific claim about strategic error, and it gives senior leaders a framework for examining decisions that are degrading their organisations from the inside. Sinek’s affiliations reflect the range at which his work operates. As an adjunct staff member at the RAND Corporation since 2010, advising on military innovation, and having spoken at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit and directly to senior leadership across every branch of the US Armed Forces, he brings institutional credibility that extends well beyond the corporate speaker circuit. Three consecutive Thinkers50 appearances, including the Future Thinker Award, confirm his standing within the serious canon of management thinking. Key speaking topics Purpose-driven leadership and the Golden Circle Organisational trust and psychological safety Finite vs. infinite mindset in strategy and leadership Leadership culture and the conditions for engagement Long-term organisational performance and decision-making Inspiring communication for leaders and teams Values, identity, and organisational alignment Ideal for C-suite and board-level leadership development programmes where the strategic case for culture and purpose needs to be made at an executive level CHROs and People directors working on engagement, trust, and the conditions under which employees perform at their best Transformation leads and strategy teams examining how short-term competitive pressures are eroding long-term capability Senior leadership conferences requiring a speaker with both mass-market name recognition and a defensible intellectual framework Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary – Golden Circle, Circle of Safety, Infinite Game – that gives leadership teams a common reference point for conversations about purpose, trust, and strategy A framework for diagnosing whether their organisation’s leadership and communication starts from why or defaults to what A reframe of competitive strategy: the finite vs. infinite mindset distinction as a diagnostic tool for identifying decisions that are weakening organisational resilience Greater clarity on the specific leadership behaviours – protection, consistency, accountability – that build psychological safety and sustain discretionary effort A practical case for why culture and purpose are strategic variables, not HR programmes

Why organisations work with Sue Garrard She has operated inside one of the most scrutinised corporate sustainability programmes in the world – accountable for 72 time-bound targets, managing teams across 180 markets, and delivering the commercial result: Unilever’s sustainable living brands growing 67% faster than the rest of the portfolio. She was part of the four-person leadership team that handled Kraft Heinz’s hostile takeover approach – giving her first-hand experience of the moment ESG strategy is tested by investor pressure in real time. She brings a specific, transferable argument: that sustainability is not a constraint on commercial performance but, if properly embedded, a measurable driver of brand growth. She has the data to demonstrate it. Her advisory work spans financial services (Lloyds Bank, NatWest), consumer goods (Mars, Danone, Heineken), and retail (Primark, O2) – sectors with structurally different ESG pressures – which means she can hold a credible board conversation across industries, not just in one. As Chair of Trustees at Blueprint for Better Business and a Fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, she is positioned at the intersection of corporate practice and governance – not a pure consultant, not a pure academic. Biography highlights Former Executive Vice President, Sustainable Business and Communications, Unilever (2014–2018) – accountable for the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan across 180 markets Founder, Sue Garrard Consulting (2019–present); advisory clients include Mars, ABF/Primark, Lloyds Bank, NatWest Banking Group, Danone, Heineken, Natura, O2, the RHS, and the BBC Chair of Trustees, Blueprint for Better Business (founder trustee) Fellow, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL); tutors on senior executive education programmes Visiting Fellow, Cranfield School of Management; Fellow of the RSA Ranked 13th in Forbes’ Top 100 Women Sustainability Influencers Worldwide (November 2020) Board member, Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit Former Director General, Customer Strategy and Communications, UK Department for Work and Pensions Biography At Unilever, Sue Garrard held responsibility for the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan – 72 quantified, time-bound targets, teams across 180 markets, and a direct mandate to make sustainability a driver of brand performance. By the time she left in 2018, Unilever’s sustainable living brands were growing 67% faster than the rest of the portfolio and representing 70% of company growth. That is not a communications outcome; it is a commercial one, and it was achieved by connecting ESG commitments to operational accountability across the business. She was also part of the four-person team, led by the CEO, that managed the rebuttal of Kraft Heinz’s hostile takeover bid. That experience – sustainability strategy meeting acute investor pressure – gives her a board-level fluency that most advisers in this space do not have. She understands what it looks like when a company’s long-term purpose is tested by short-term market logic. Since founding Sue Garrard Consulting in 2019, she has advised boards and executive teams at Mars, Danone, Lloyds Bank, NatWest, ABF/Primark, Heineken, O2, and others across consumer goods, financial services, and retail. Both Primark and the Royal Horticultural Society launched public sustainability strategies in 2021 built on her work. She tutors on CISL’s senior executive education programmes at Cambridge, and serves as Chair of Trustees at Blueprint for Better Business. Forbes placed her 13th in its global ranking of the top 100 women sustainability influencers in 2020. Her public argument, consistently made across interviews and platforms, is direct: sustainability is not a moral addition to business strategy – it is business strategy, and the organisations that treat it otherwise are building structural risk into their commercial model. Key speaking topics Corporate sustainability strategy and commercial integration ESG governance and board accountability Sustainable brand growth and marketing Stakeholder and investor scrutiny Net zero strategy and organisational transition Purpose-led business leadership Public–private sector leadership Ideal for Boards and C-suite executives navigating ESG accountability and investor pressure Chief Sustainability Officers and sustainability leadership teams building or overhauling strategy Brand and marketing leadership teams connecting sustainability to growth Organisations in financial services, consumer goods, or retail at a strategic inflection point on sustainability Audience outcomes A clearer framework for connecting sustainability targets to commercial performance metrics, not just reporting obligations Practical understanding of what large-scale ESG integration looks like operationally – including where it fails and why A more credible way to articulate the business case for sustainability to boards, investors, and senior leadership teams Insight into how to navigate investor and stakeholder scrutiny when sustainability commitments are challenged Perspective on the governance structures that sustain long-term sustainability commitment through leadership and market cycles

Why organisations work with Suzy Walton Triple-chartered credentials (Chartered Director, Chartered Occupational Psychologist, Chartered Scientist) that few governance speakers in the UK can match, paired with active board service across more than fifteen organisations. Direct Whitehall experience, including the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, and a 2025 Cabinet Office policy appointment by the Prime Minister. Operational military psychology background, including PhD research on suicide within the Armed Forces and lecturing at NATO events on terrorist profiling and behaviour under extreme stress. Nearly a decade as the longest-serving board member of the Institute of Directors, now strategic advisor and chair of the IoD Accreditation and Standards Committee, giving boards a benchmark voice on director standards. A perspective on resilience grounded in real biographical fact: long-term widowhood, raising seven children, and a career rebuilt from West End stage through to Cabinet Office. Biography highlights Chartered Director, Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Chartered Scientist. PhD, Cranfield University, on suicide within the Armed Forces. Former senior civil servant: Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. Vice-President, Combat Stress; former Vice-President, Royal Society of Medicine (2019 to 2021). Longest-serving member on the Institute of Directors main board, 2013 to 2022; current strategic advisor. Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Hertfordshire, 2026; BSc (Hons) and MSc in Psychology from the same institution. Former West End actress (Children of a Lesser God), BBC Television presenter and Sky News reporter. Biography The standard governance speaker tends to come from one track: City, Big Four, executive search. Suzy Walton arrives from four. She is a Chartered Director, Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Chartered Scientist, qualifications usually distributed across three different professionals, and she has used all three in active board service. Her doctorate, awarded by Cranfield University, was on suicide within the Armed Forces and was initially classified. As a serving military psychologist she designed Resistance to Interrogation training, built recruitment systems for classified roles, and lectured at NATO events on terrorist profiling and human behaviour under extreme stress. Senior civil service postings in the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit followed, and in 2025 the Prime Minister appointed her to a fresh policy role in the Cabinet Office. In 2026 the University of Hertfordshire, where she took her BSc and MSc, awarded her an honorary Doctor of Science. The board record is long and substantive. She was the longest-serving member of the main board of the Institute of Directors, from 2013 to 2022, and now sits as strategic advisor and chair of its Accreditation and Standards Committee. She has held positions at ACCA, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Society of Medicine, the Internet Watch Foundation, the University of Westminster, the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, the Social Security Advisory Committee and the State Honours Committee. She is Vice-President of Combat Stress. What she draws on in front of a senior audience is the unusual width of that record set against an unusual personal one: a former West End actress in Children of a Lesser God, BBC and Sky News broadcaster, mother of seven, widowed for many years. Boards interested in honest governance and serious resilience tend to be the ones that book her. Key speaking topics Corporate governance and board effectiveness Director standards and chartered practice Resilience and behaviour under extreme stress Women on boards and inclusive governance Public service leadership and civil service strategy Veterans’ mental health and Combat Stress Multi-role careers and reinvention Ideal for Boards, NEDs and chairs raising the standard of director practice Senior civil service, regulatory and public-sector leadership audiences CHROs, talent and inclusion leads working on women into board roles Healthcare, professional body and charity leadership audiences Audience outcomes A clearer benchmark for what good director conduct looks like, drawn from a chartered framework. A direct view of how Whitehall actually makes policy decisions, from someone who has been in the room. A grounded model of resilience that is not motivational but operational, built from military psychology and personal biography. Practical reference points for boards trying to take women, diversity and governance standards seriously at the same time.

Why organisations work with Tom Turcich His credibility is not analogical: it is verifiable. The world walk is ranked in a finite historical list of ten people, documented in a published memoir, and covered by CNN, BBC, Good Morning America, The Guardian, and The Today Show. Seven continuous years of forward motion without a salary, fixed team, or guaranteed outcome offers a model of value-driven decision-making that is directly applicable to organisations sustaining long-term transformation. His Circle of Possibility framework reframes constraints as inputs to problem-solving rather than barriers to progress, making his content directly usable by teams operating under resource pressure or strategic uncertainty. The journey was values-led from day one: Turcich navigated every decision – including years of solitude, a global pandemic, and active conflict zones – by a clear internal compass. That makes his framework credible for organisations focused on purpose-driven culture rather than performance management alone. Biography highlights Tenth person in recorded history to complete a circumnavigation of the globe on foot Seven-year, 28,000-mile journey across six continents and 38 countries, beginning April 2015 His rescue dog Savannah became the first dog ever to walk around the world Author of The World Walk (Skyhorse Publishing, 2024), a full-length memoir of the expedition Featured by CNN, BBC, Good Morning America, The Guardian, and The Today Show Author of the Savannah’s World of Adventure children’s book series Biography Most people’s resilience is tested in months. Tom Turcich spent seven years walking 28,000 miles across six continents and 38 countries; a journey that placed him in the historically small group of ten people ever recorded to have circled the globe on foot. That context is not incidental to his work with organisations. It is the evidence. The walk began the day before his 26th birthday, prompted by the death of a close friend that forced a reckoning with how a life should be spent. It ended in May 2022. Along the way, Turcich navigated deserts, conflict zones, a global pandemic, and sustained solitude; guided not by a fixed itinerary but by a set of core values he had articulated before he left. His memoir, The World Walk (Skyhorse Publishing, 2024), documents both the physical journey and the decision-making architecture that sustained it. For organisations, the relevance lies not in the spectacle of the achievement but in its mechanics. His talks, built around the Circle of Possibility framework, address the specific tension between ambitious long-term goals and the daily reality of setback, discomfort, and unclear progress. The same principles that kept him moving across the Andes and through Central Asia translate directly to teams operating under sustained strategic pressure. His story has been covered by CNN, BBC, Good Morning America, The Guardian, and The Today Show. The World Walk received endorsements from two New York Times bestselling authors. A second non-fiction book, applying the lessons of the walk to organisational and professional life, is in progress. Key speaking topics Long-term resilience and sustained commitment Values-driven decision-making Goal-setting under uncertainty Reframing constraints as catalysts Purpose and personal accountability Endurance mindset in professional contexts Ideal for Leadership and executive teams navigating multi-year change programmes Sales and commercial conferences requiring a credible performance and resilience narrative Employee engagement and offsite events where purpose and motivation are central themes HR and people leaders building resilience culture within the workforce Audience outcomes A practical framework (Circle of Possibility) for sustaining commitment when progress is slow or unclear A more granular understanding of what resilience looks like in practice over an extended timeframe: not as a trait but as a set of daily decisions Sharper thinking about how personal values can function as a decision-making tool under pressure Perspective on the relationship between constraints and creative problem-solving A reframe of long-term ambition: from an abstract goal to a sequence of deliberate, manageable steps

Why organisations work with Václav Klaus He is the primary architect of the Czech Republic’s post-communist economic transition, not as an external adviser, but as the Finance Minister who designed it, the Prime Minister who implemented it, and the President who observed its long-run consequences. No other figure on the international speaking circuit holds that complete a first-person record of a major market transformation. His sustained, published intellectual case, developed across books including Europe: The Shattering of Illusions and a decade of presidential addresses that EU supranational governance creates structural democratic deficits offers boards a coherent counter-framework to mainstream European institutional narratives. His analysis of the relationship between regulatory ideology and economic freedom, framed from the position of a practising economist who held executive power, gives risk and strategy teams a perspective that is distinct from both academic economics and professional political commentary. As a founding member of the Mont Pelerin Society tradition and a consistent critic of consensus-driven policy, he surfaces the assumptions embedded in mainstream geopolitical and economic risk frameworks, which is precisely what senior decision-makers need when those frameworks are under stress. Biography highlights Second President of the Czech Republic, serving two full terms (2003–2013) First Prime Minister of the independent Czech Republic (1993–1998); previously Prime Minister under the Czechoslovak federation (1992–1993) First non-communist Finance Minister of Czechoslovakia following the Velvet Revolution (1989–1992) Principal co-founder and chairman (1991–2002) of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the Czech Republic’s primary centre-right party PhD in Economics, Czech Academy of Sciences; Professor of Finance, University of Economics, Prague Author of more than 30 books, including Blue Planet in Green Shackles (Competitive Enterprise Institute) and Europe: The Shattering of Illusions (Bloomsbury) Contributor to the Financial Times; keynote speaker at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Press Club, Washington D.C. Founder of the Václav Klaus Institute; member of the Mont Pelerin Society Biography The question of how a country transitions from a centrally planned economy to a functioning market, and what that process reveals about the relationship between political institutions, economic policy, and individual freedom, has preoccupied Václav Klaus for his entire career. It is not an abstract question for him. As Czechoslovakia’s first non-communist Finance Minister from 1989, as the Prime Minister who managed the peaceful dissolution of the federation and guided the Czech Republic through its founding years, and as a two-term President, he lived the consequences of every decision he and his colleagues made. His contribution to post-communist economic theory was substantive and contested. The voucher privatisation programme he championed as Prime Minister transferred shares in over 1,800 state enterprises to more than six million Czech citizens in three years: the most radical monetarist reform programme undertaken by any former Comecon state, according to Oxford Reference. The programme’s outcomes – both its achievements and its limitations – remain a core reference point in debates about transition economics and the sequencing of institutional and market reform. Beyond the Czech experience, Klaus has developed a consistent and systematic critique of supranational governance that distinguishes him from most former heads of state on the international circuit. His book Europe: The Shattering of Illusions and his decade of presidential statements argue that the EU’s integration model generates a structural democratic deficit: that decisions affecting citizens are progressively removed from accountable national institutions and transferred to bodies that cannot be held to account through normal democratic mechanisms. This is not a position he arrived at recently; it was central to his resistance to the Lisbon Treaty and to his public intellectual work throughout his presidency. His analytical frame, rooted in the free-market tradition of Hayek and Friedman, positions him as a consistent critic of consensus-driven policy thinking – on European integration, on climate regulation, and on the trade-offs between regulatory ambition and economic freedom. For boards and senior strategy teams working to understand the structural forces behind today’s geopolitical fragmentation, his perspective offers something genuinely scarce: a first-person account of what happens when political institutions, economic doctrine, and sovereign interests collide. Key speaking topics Post-communist economic transformation and market transition National sovereignty and the limits of supranational governance European political and institutional fragmentation Fiscal and monetary policy in practice The political economy of climate and environmental regulation Geopolitical risk and the return of economic nationalism The relationship between political institutions and economic freedom Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams in financial services, energy, and industrial sectors with significant European or Central and Eastern European exposure Government relations, public affairs, and policy teams navigating regulatory and geopolitical risk Senior strategy and scenario planning functions working on European institutional risk Organisations convening executive or leadership audiences on geopolitics, sovereign risk, or the future of the multilateral economic order Audience outcomes A first-hand, practitioner-level account of how post-communist economic transformation was designed and executed – including what worked, what did not, and what the trade-offs reveal about sequencing institutional and market reform A developed analytical framework for understanding the structural tensions between national sovereignty and supranational governance, grounded in lived political experience rather than theoretical modelling A counter-perspective to mainstream consensus on European institutional development – useful for stress-testing assumptions embedded in geopolitical risk and scenario planning work Greater clarity on the political and ideological drivers behind regulatory trends in climate, energy, and fiscal policy, framed through the lens of economic freedom and democratic accountability Historical and structural context for the fragmentation currently visible in European and global governance, from a figure who anticipated and publicly argued for its likelihood