Workforce Transformation

Why organisations work with Mark Levy He built Employee Experience as a discipline inside Airbnb during the years it was named Glassdoor’s #1 Place to Work, so the playbook he teaches is one he has actually shipped. He treats culture as something designed, instrumented, and operated, not as a values poster or a wellness programme, which gives CHROs and CEOs a concrete way to talk about it with the board. He has done the same work twice at very different scales, at Airbnb in hypergrowth and at Allbirds through global expansion, so the frameworks travel beyond one company’s circumstances. He is co-authoring the Wiley method that is becoming the reference text for EX practitioners, alongside Dean Carter of Patagonia and Samantha Gadd, which gives his sessions a body of work rather than a personal anecdote set. He speaks fluently to the alignment between CMO and CHRO, where most internal-brand efforts break down, because he has run the function that sits between them. Biography highlights Pioneered the Employee Experience function at Airbnb, replacing the traditional HR model with an end-to-end employee journey approach. Led the people and culture work during the year Airbnb was named Glassdoor’s #1 Place to Work. Most recently led Employee Experience at Allbirds during its global expansion. Co-author of Employee Experience Design (Wiley, 2026) with Dean Carter and Samantha Gadd. Earlier corporate roles at Best Buy, Levi Strauss & Company, Gap Inc., and Thomson/Technicolor in Paris. Board director at First Graduate; former Gap Foundation board member; advisor to Backstage Capital and MixR. JD/MBA from the University of Colorado. Biography Airbnb hit Glassdoor’s #1 Place to Work ranking in 2016 with a people function that did not look like a people function. It had been rebuilt as Employee Experience, with culture, workplace, and social impact reporting alongside traditional HR. The person who designed that structure was Mark Levy. He came to it from a long retail and consumer career: Best Buy, Levi Strauss & Company, Gap Inc., and two years at Thomson/Technicolor in Paris. The pattern across those roles was practical, not academic. How does a company actually live its brand internally, in the systems and rituals employees experience every day, rather than in the language printed on the wall? At Airbnb he turned that question into an operating model. The result, codified now in the Wiley book he co-authored with Dean Carter of Patagonia and Samantha Gadd, treats employee experience as something you design with employees rather than for them, and instrument the way a product team would. Most recently he led the same work at Allbirds as the company scaled internationally. What organisations get from him is the rare combination of a builder who has actually run the function and a teacher with a published method. The audience he is sharpest with is the CHRO who needs to translate culture into board-readable substance, and the CEO and CMO who want the company their customers experience to match the company their employees work in. Key speaking topics Employee Experience design Belonging and the internal brand Culture during hypergrowth and global expansion The shift from HR to end-to-end employee journey CMO and CHRO alignment on brand Hybrid and distributed work Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers redesigning the HR operating model. CEOs and founder-led companies in scale-up where culture is starting to fragment. CMOs and brand leaders working with people teams on internal brand and employer brand. Boards and executive committees treating culture as a governance topic, not an HR topic. Audience outcomes A clear distinction between Employee Experience as a discipline and HR as a function, with the structural implications of each. A practical model for designing employee journeys the way product teams design customer journeys. A working language for the CMO and CHRO to align internal and external brand. Specific examples from Airbnb and Allbirds of what design-led culture looks like when it is built and instrumented. A reference point in the Wiley method, including how Patagonia, Airbnb, and other companies have made it operational.

Why organisations work with Allister Frost A named, proprietary framework, the ReadyAlready Growth Cycle, that gives audiences a shared language for working through change fatigue, rather than a generic motivational message. Operator credibility from inside Microsoft’s first digital marketing strategy function, including the “I’M A PC” campaign and global Windows and Office launches, applied directly to the human side of technology adoption. Two decades of brand and transformation work at Kimberly-Clark and Microsoft, recognised by a Cannes Silver Direct Lion and twice by the Lester Wunderman Award for Outstanding Creative Work. A track record of large all-hands and culture-led audiences at BBC, Vodafone, 3M, Cisco, Pfizer, Hyundai, GE HealthCare and Reckitt, where the brief is energy and adoption, not abstract futurism. Recognition by his own profession: Chartered Marketer, Elected Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, twice UK Digital Marketing Personality of the Year, and Winner at The Speaker Awards 2023. Biography highlights Microsoft’s first Head of Digital Marketing Strategy, responsible for global Windows and Office launch campaigns, including “I’M A PC”. Former Kimberly-Clark marketing leader for Andrex, Kleenex and Huggies. Author of ReadyAlready: The Future-Ready Mindset to Keep Up, Stand Out, and Shape What’s Next. Cannes Silver Direct Lion winner; twice winner of the Lester Wunderman Award for Outstanding Creative Work. Chartered Marketer and Elected Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. UK Digital Marketing Personality of the Year, 2013 and 2019; Winner, The Speaker Awards 2023. Biography Most large organisations have not run out of change programmes. They have run out of people willing to engage with the next one. Years of restructure, platform migration and now AI rollout have left workforces more fatigued than resistant, and that is the harder problem to solve. Frost spent two decades inside that problem before he started speaking about it. At Kimberly-Clark he led marketing for Andrex, Kleenex and Huggies. He then moved to Microsoft as the company’s first Head of Digital Marketing Strategy, where he ran global launch campaigns for Windows and Office and the “I’M A PC” work. The work earned a Cannes Silver Direct Lion and two Lester Wunderman Awards for Outstanding Creative Work. Since 2012 he has built a speaking practice around a single framework, the ReadyAlready Growth Cycle, set out in his book ReadyAlready: The Future-Ready Mindset to Keep Up, Stand Out, and Shape What’s Next. The argument is that the gap holding back most transformation programmes is not strategy or technology, it is the human appetite to engage. The framework gives audiences a working language for that gap. His audiences reflect the brief. He has worked with BBC, Vodafone, 3M, Cisco, Pfizer, Hyundai, GE HealthCare, Reckitt, Bloomberg and Network Rail, typically at all-hands events, culture forums and senior leadership retreats. The Chartered Institute of Marketing has elected him a Fellow, and the UK industry named him Digital Marketing Personality of the Year in 2013 and again in 2019. He won at The Speaker Awards 2023. Key speaking topics Future-Ready Mindset Change fatigue and workforce adoption The human side of AI and digital transformation Employee engagement at scale Culture in technology-led change Leadership communication during transformation Marketing and brand reinvention Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and internal communications leads planning all-hands and culture moments Transformation and change leaders preparing workforces for AI and digital adoption C-suite and senior leadership teams running annual kickoffs, town halls, and strategy retreats CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding marketing function capability in an AI-shaped market Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for naming and working through change fatigue inside a team The ReadyAlready Growth Cycle as a usable framework, not just a model on a slide A clearer view of which human capabilities still matter as AI absorbs more of the work Practical prompts to turn passive consumers of change into active contributors Re-energised commitment to the next phase of transformation, anchored to specific personal habits

Why organisations work with Zack Kass He built the commercial engine inside OpenAI that translated frontier research into deployed products, which is a different vantage point from any external futurist or consultant. His “Unmetered Intelligence” framework gives boards a concrete way to plan for AI as infrastructure, not as a vendor decision, and it travels into capital allocation conversations rather than staying inside the IT function. He works directly with the leadership teams of named global organisations, including Coca-Cola, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, Deloitte, and Amgen, so the room recognises that the playbook has been pressure-tested against companies they compete with. His Wiley book, The Next Renaissance, is a USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and LA Times bestseller, which gives a CHRO or CIO a coherent reference for their executive team and not only a keynote. He is a recurring voice on Bloomberg and CNBC on AI risk, capital, and workforce impact, so the credibility check a buyer does after the call confirms the brief. Biography highlights Former Head of Go-To-Market at OpenAI; built the sales, partnerships, and customer success teams. Author of The Next Renaissance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential (Wiley, 2026); USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and LA Times bestseller. Executive-in-Residence, University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce. Founder of ZKAI LLC; author of the “Unmetered Intelligence” white paper. Advisor to Fortune 1,000 leadership teams including Coca-Cola, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, Deloitte, PayPal, MetLife, TikTok, Amgen, and The Hartford. Recurring AI commentator for Bloomberg and CNBC; bylined contributor to Fortune. B.A., University of California, Berkeley. Biography OpenAI’s research only became a market because someone had to translate model weights into contracts, support, and adoption inside the world’s largest companies. That commercial scaffolding was built by the team Kass led as Head of Go-To-Market, and it is the unusual seat that shapes what he now offers to boards. The proposition is operational. Most leadership teams have approved AI pilots. Few have made the harder decisions about where intelligence sits in the workflow, who is accountable for outcomes, and what gets reorganised when cognitive capacity stops being scarce. Kass writes about that shift in his Wiley book, The Next Renaissance, and codifies it in his “Unmetered Intelligence” framework, which treats AI as infrastructure on the order of electricity rather than as a product category. The advisory base is concrete. Coca-Cola, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, Deloitte, PayPal, MetLife, TikTok, Amgen, and The Hartford have all worked with him directly, and the case studies that surface in his keynotes are drawn from those rooms. Bloomberg and CNBC use him as a recurring voice on AI risk and capital allocation, and his Fortune writing pushes the same argument into wider business debate. He is also Executive-in-Residence at UVA McIntire, which keeps the research and the boardroom work on the same circuit. What boards take from him is a sharper read on the next two to three years of AI deployment, written in the language of operating decisions rather than technical features. The choices around workforce, capital, and capability sequencing are no longer theoretical for most executive teams, and Kass is one of the few voices who has watched them get made from the inside of the company that triggered them. Key speaking topics Applied AI strategy for Fortune 1,000 leadership teams The Unmetered Intelligence thesis AI deployment beyond pilots Workforce redesign in the age of AI The Next Renaissance: AI and human potential AI risk, regulation, and board governance Capital allocation and AI infrastructure Ideal for CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, and CHROs setting enterprise AI strategy Boards and audit committees pressure-testing AI risk and governance posture Senior leadership offsites focused on AI deployment and workforce redesign Industry conferences for financial services, technology, healthcare, and consumer goods Audience outcomes A clearer line between AI experimentation and the operating decisions that follow it A board-ready framing for AI as infrastructure, drawing on the Unmetered Intelligence thesis Specific reference points from named Fortune 1,000 deployments rather than generic case studies A defensible position on AI risk, capital allocation, and workforce impact to take back to executive teams

Why organisations work with Markus Bernhardt He runs a continuous research programme, The Endeavor Report, built on client-led case studies of what is actually working in enterprise AI adoption, so the analysis a board hears is grounded in field evidence rather than vendor positioning. He translates AI capability into operating model decisions: where to redesign workflows, how to govern adoption, which workforce shifts to plan for. The conversation moves from technology curiosity to structural choice. He carries credibility on both sides of the table, having advised technology vendors on go-to-market and Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 leaders on transformation, which lets him read where vendor claims meet enterprise reality. His pragmatic stance is explicit: no silver bullet, no hype framing. Senior buyers get an honest read on adoption maturity, polarisation across the workforce, and the specific points where AI actually changes the cost or quality of work. Forbes Technology Council member and recurring contributor to Training Magazine, the Learning Guild and ATD, with two TD Magazine cover stories, giving the body of published thinking a paper trail leaders can verify. Biography highlights Founder of Endeavor Intelligence, an independent AI strategy research and advisory firm Author of The Endeavor Report, a research programme on applied workforce solutions and enterprise AI adoption Co-creator of the TTE AI Strategy Framework with The Thinking Effect Former Chief Evangelist at Obrizum, a deep-tech adaptive learning company Forbes Technology Council member; contributor to Training Magazine, the Learning Guild, ATD and Coaching Magazine Doctorate in physics; two decades of work with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 organisations Biography Enterprise AI adoption rarely fails on the technology. It fails on the operating model around it: who owns the workflow change, which capabilities the workforce needs next, what governance has to sit underneath. Markus Bernhardt’s work at Endeavor Intelligence is built around that gap. The Endeavor Report, his flagship research programme, sits on real client case studies rather than vendor surveys. It plots organisations across efficiency accelerators, strategic enablers, capability creators and core process innovators, giving leaders a vocabulary for the adoption choice in front of them. The argument is field-tested, and it lands where boards actually decide. His earlier role as Chief Evangelist at Obrizum, a deep-tech adaptive learning company, gave him an operator’s read on how AI changes capability development inside organisations. That experience now feeds the workforce side of his research, alongside published work in Training Magazine, the Learning Guild and ATD, and a seat on the Forbes Technology Council. A physics doctorate sets the underlying disposition. Bernhardt is sceptical of pattern claims that do not survive the data, blunt about where AI actually shifts cost or quality, and explicit that there is no silver bullet for adoption at scale. For senior leaders weighing capital, structure and workforce moves at the same time, that posture is the point. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and adoption Applied workforce solutions AI governance and operating model design Workforce transformation and capability development Evidence-based decision support for senior leaders AI in learning and performance Future of work in AI-augmented organisations Ideal for C-suite leaders weighing AI investment, governance and operating model decisions CHROs and chief learning officers planning workforce capability shifts Strategy, transformation and innovation leads designing enterprise AI roadmaps Boards seeking an independent, research-backed read on AI adoption maturity Audience outcomes A clearer map of where their organisation sits across the four adoption archetypes Bernhardt’s research identifies A sharper read on which AI claims to discount and which to act on Specific governance and operating model questions to put to internal teams and vendors A framework for talking about workforce polarisation as adoption deepens Language a senior team can carry into the next board conversation on AI

Why organisations work with Danilo McGarry He has run AI inside two of the largest regulated enterprises on the planet. Buyers get an operator who has defended budgets, cleared risk committees and shipped at scale, not a consultant describing other people’s work. His track record is tied to outcomes in the numbers. His work at Alter Domus is associated with a period of significant valuation growth, and his engagements are framed around measurable cost, revenue and risk impact rather than adoption metrics. He sits at the board-level interface of AI. He teaches on the Financial Times Board Directors Programme and advises the CIPD on AI, which means the language he uses lands with directors, not just technologists. He explains complex AI choices in terms non-technical leaders can act on. That is what earns him repeat invitations from banks, insurers, health systems and consultancies where the decision rests with a chief executive or a chair. Biography highlights Former Head of AI at Citigroup, leading enterprise AI and automation inside one of the world’s largest banks. Former Head of AI at UnitedHealth Group, operator of one of the largest software-robot estates in any healthcare business. Former Global Head of AI and Automation at Alter Domus, the fund services group, from December 2019. Strategic adviser on artificial intelligence to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Faculty contributor to the Financial Times Board Directors Programme. Host of the “It’s All About AI” podcast; TEDx speaker; ranked on Thinkers360 and Onalytica lists of leading AI voices. Biography The hard part of enterprise AI is not the model. It is the decision to commit, the governance to contain the risk, and the operational grip to turn a working pilot into a line on the P&L. Danilo McGarry has spent his career on the inside of that problem. At Citigroup he led artificial intelligence and machine learning, launching automation and AI initiatives across capital markets operations. He then became a senior AI leader at UnitedHealth Group, where his remit included a programme of roughly 3,500 software “digital workers” embedded in one of the largest healthcare businesses in the United States. As Global Head of AI and Automation at Alter Domus from 2019, he built an AI and automation function inside a fund services firm through a period of significant growth. Earlier roles at JPMorgan and Royal Bank of Canada gave him the grounding in regulated operations that now sits under everything he says on stage. That operator track record is why boards listen. He is a faculty contributor to the Financial Times Board Directors Programme and strategic adviser on AI to the CIPD, which puts him in front of chairs, chief executives and people leaders making the governance calls. He is cited and quoted in outlets including the Financial Times, The Times, Bloomberg, Forbes and WIRED, and ranks on Thinkers360 and Onalytica lists of leading voices in AI and intelligent automation. His argument on stage is practical. Treat AI as an operating-model question, not a tooling question. Pick the handful of processes where the economics are real, industrialise them, and build the governance that lets the next wave scale without fresh permission every time. It is a message that lands with leadership teams who are tired of pilot decks and want to know what to do on Monday. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy AI operating models and governance Intelligent automation at scale AI in financial services and healthcare Board-level AI literacy Digital workers and the future of operations Responsible AI adoption Ideal for Boards and chief executives setting enterprise AI policy and investment envelopes. CIOs, CDOs and heads of transformation running AI and automation portfolios. CHROs and people leaders rethinking workforce design around AI and digital workers. Regulated-sector leadership teams in banking, insurance, asset servicing and healthcare. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI actually moves the numbers inside their own operating model. A working vocabulary for the governance, risk and workforce questions AI creates at board level. Concrete reference points from AI deployments inside Citigroup, UnitedHealth Group and Alter Domus. A sharper read on which AI investments industrialise and which stay trapped as pilots. Confidence to set the next twelve months of AI priorities with fewer, better bets.

Why organisations work with Hollie Castro Operating record across the moments that test a people function: IPO transition at YETI, take-private of BMC Software under Bain Capital and Insight Partners, and VC-backed scale-up at Miro under Accel and ICONIQ. Sits credibly in the boardroom on AI and the workforce, co-chairing the NACD Austin chapter and leading director-level sessions on GenAI governance and the multigenerational workforce. Has actually run HR at global scale: workforces of 1,500 to 50,000, 90 countries, budgets to USD 200 million, 25-plus acquisitions integrated. Bridges Fortune 500 and late-stage start-up worlds, including current advisory work with HR-focused AI founders at Series A through her firm HC Advice. Recognised externally where it counts: Financial Times Group Top 100 Board Candidates and the HR Transformation award at Silicon Valley’s High Tech Symposium. Biography highlights Five-time CHRO and Chief Administration Officer: YETI, BMC Software, Talisman Energy, Miro, Kony. Co-Chair, Austin Advisory Board, National Association of Corporate Directors. Advisory Board Member, Texas A&M Mays School of Business Center for Human Resources. Stanford University and NACD certified Corporate Director; MBA, Thunderbird School of Global Management. Financial Times Group Top 100 Board Candidates; HR Transformation award, Silicon Valley High Tech Symposium. Published in Fast Company, Forbes, The Corporate Board, and Directors & Boards; featured at HR Retail and on the Revenue Builders podcast. Biography Few HR leaders have sat in the seat across as many high-pressure transitions. As CHRO, Castro took YETI through its IPO from private equity ownership at Cortec, led BMC Software through its take-private under Bain Capital and Insight Partners, and ran people strategy at Miro and Kony alongside Accel and ICONIQ Capital. The thread across those mandates is the same: HR as an operating discipline tied to capital events, not a support function. Her scope has been unusually broad. Workforces of 1,500 to 50,000, operations in 90 countries, budgets to USD 200 million, and more than 25 acquisitions integrated. That range includes the cultural architecture work that ESG and compensation committees now ask for, as well as the harder M&A integration calls that decide whether a deal earns its thesis. The board work has become a second discipline. Castro co-chairs the Austin advisory board of the National Association of Corporate Directors and led the 2024 NACD Director Summit conversation on how boards govern GenAI alongside a five-generation workforce. She is a Stanford and NACD certified Corporate Director, a Thunderbird MBA, and was named to the Financial Times Group’s Top 100 Board Candidates. Today she advises HR-focused AI founders at Series A through HC Advice and writes for Fast Company, Forbes, The Corporate Board, and Directors & Boards on the governance questions that follow when HR is asked to deploy AI at scale. Key speaking topics The CHRO as a strategic business partner Generative AI in HR and talent acquisition Global HR strategy and M&A integration Board governance of AI and the workforce Scaling people functions through IPO and take-private events ESG, compensation, and human capital in the boardroom The multigenerational workforce Agile HR and design thinking Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and CPO-track HR leaders preparing for board-facing roles. Boards, compensation committees, and audit committees engaging with AI, human capital, and ESG oversight. CEOs and executive teams in private equity portfolio companies or scale-ups preparing for IPO, M&A, or take-private events. Leadership programmes for senior women in operating and director roles. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what boards now expect from HR on AI, talent risk, and human capital reporting. Specific reference points on integrating HR through IPO, take-private, and cross-border M&A. A working view of how generative AI is changing talent acquisition and the CHRO operating model. Director-level language for governing AI ethics, workforce design, and compensation in tandem.

Why organisations work with Niluka Kavanagh She co-founded KPMG’s Behavioural Science Unit, giving her a practitioner’s understanding of how psychological insight can be embedded in organisational design: not cited in a presentation, but built into real structures inside a global firm. The KPMG FutureThinkers initiative she co-founded, convening speakers from the BBC, HSBC, and others, gives her direct insight into how large organisations signal innovation internally, and where those signals fall short. Through The Modern CEO, her leadership framework for organisations, she takes the multigenerational engagement debate out of HR theory and into the specifics of daily leadership communication, psychological safety, and behavioural design across teams. She has operated inside large organisations and built independent businesses, so she can speak to the intrapreneurship and autonomy conversation from both sides of the corporate boundary. Operating experience across fourteen countries, with a community of more than a thousand independent founders behind her, gives her a working understanding of what trust, engagement, and team performance look like when conventional structures of co-location and hierarchy do not apply. Biography highlights Opened the 2026 Learning Technologies conference programme on the human side of the future of work, at Europe’s largest workplace learning event Co-founded KPMG’s Behavioural Science Unit and the KPMG FutureThinkers initiative during nearly five years as a consultant and project lead at the firm Advised organisations including Mastercard, Tesco, the London Stock Exchange Group, and Lloyds Bank Published in The World Financial Review on the application of behavioural science to customer experience design, and featured in MSN’s “Top 10 Leading Speakers to Follow” (2025) Member of the UN Innovation Network (UNIN) Graduate of the University of Oxford (English, Somerville College) and an Alumni Ambassador for the college; has guest lectured at Trinity College Dublin and the University of Edinburgh Founder of ImagineThat, a global community for entrepreneurs with more than 1,000 members across multiple countries Biography Most organisations still use presence as a proxy for productivity and hierarchy as a proxy for trust. Neither assumption holds for the workforce that is now entering and increasingly leaving corporate life. Niluka Kavanagh’s work sits precisely at that fault line: the widening gap between how organisations are designed and what the people inside them now expect. Her grounding in this is practical. At KPMG, she spent nearly five years consulting for organisations including Mastercard, Tesco, and the London Stock Exchange Group, co-founding both the firm’s Behavioural Science Unit and its FutureThinkers initiative. Both projects were about the same thing: applying psychological and behavioural insight to how organisations lead change, design experiences, and engage the people doing the work. She now takes that thinking to the stage. In 2026 she opened the Learning Technologies conference, Europe’s largest workplace learning event, on the human side of the future of work, and she is a member of the UN Innovation Network. Her writing on behavioural science and customer experience has appeared in The World Financial Review. That work rests on an unusual operating base. Three businesses, fourteen countries of operating experience, and a community of more than a thousand independent founders gave her the empirical foundation for The Modern CEO, a leadership framework focused on engagement, communication, psychological safety, and intrapreneurship across multigenerational teams. She works with senior leaders to move organisations beyond outdated management models towards cultures built on clarity, trust, and sustainable performance. Key speaking topics Future of work and workforce transformation The Modern CEO framework for multigenerational leadership Behavioural science in organisational design Multigenerational leadership and team engagement Intrapreneurship and internal innovation Human-centric leadership and trust structures Leadership communication and psychological safety Ideal for CHROs and people leaders managing generational shifts in workforce expectation and culture CEOs and senior leadership teams seeking to align organisational structure with modern ways of working Transformation leads and change teams working on culture, engagement, and talent retention Professional services and entrepreneurial firms navigating the shift to more autonomous, distributed, or flexible operating models Audience outcomes A working understanding of how generational values are reshaping expectations around autonomy, leadership, and work design, and where the organisational cost is already showing up The Modern CEO framework as a practical model for engagement, intrapreneurship, communication, and psychological safety across multigenerational teams Concrete approaches to unlocking intrapreneurial thinking in teams, drawn from real experience building innovation initiatives inside a global consultancy A clearer sense of how behavioural science applies to culture and leadership challenges beyond the theoretical, grounded in organisational practice Practical questions to apply to their own organisation’s structure, communication norms, and talent strategy

Why organisations work with Jennifer Vessels The P.E.A.C.E. Framework gives transformation a structured language and methodology: not abstract change theory, but a tested roadmap built from live engagements inside organisations including Adobe, Cisco, and Novartis She brings Silicon Valley operational experience applied globally. Having led transformation programmes across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, she translates insider knowledge of how the world’s most innovation-intensive organisations actually work into practical approaches for complex, multinational businesses She is an active CEO running transformation programmes concurrently with her speaking engagements, meaning her insights reflect current deployments, not retrospective case studies Her work on generational integration, aligning Gen Z talent, AI capability, and experienced human capital, addresses a workforce tension that most change and transformation speakers do not tackle with equivalent specificity Through the Executive Growth Alliance (EGA), she connects audiences to a live community of F100 leaders navigating the same challenges, giving organisations access to a peer learning network beyond the event itself Biography highlights CEO of Next Step, Silicon Valley consulting firm leading business transformation for global enterprises since 2006 Founder, Executive Growth Alliance: a global peer community of Fortune 100 leaders focused on future-of-work and AI adoption Creator of the P.E.A.C.E. Framework (Purpose, Exploration, Action, Collaboration, Empowerment), deployed across organisations including Adobe, Cisco, Google, IKEA, Microsoft, Novartis, and Schneider Electric Awarded “Best Technology Speaker ’24” (IOFM, Diversified Communications) Author of No Clue, No Fear: Navigating Storms of Change; new book Emergence: How Leaders Break Free from Outdated Thinking (Wiley, October 2026) Featured by EFMD, the World Economic Forum, the Institute of Directors, the San Jose Mercury News, and The New York Times MBA, San Jose State University; MS Occupational Psychology, University of London; INSEAD board governance certification Early career: international business development at Tandberg (acquired by Cisco); Director of Global Sales Operations at Tandem Computers Biography Leadership thinking built for the Industrial Age is not built for what organisations are experiencing now. Most change programmes assume that if the strategy is sound and the technology is right, transformation will follow. It does not. The missing variable is almost always how leaders are thinking, and what they are willing to let go of. Jennifer Vessels has spent two decades inside that gap, working as CEO of Next Step across Silicon Valley, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Her client list includes Adobe, Cisco, Google, IKEA, Microsoft, Novartis, and Schneider Electric: organisations navigating business model change, AI adoption, and leadership redesign at scale. From that operational experience, she developed the P.E.A.C.E. Framework: a structured methodology giving leaders a repeatable roadmap through disruptive change rather than a case for why change is necessary. What distinguishes her position is its currency. She is not drawing on past engagements. As an active CEO running transformation programmes alongside her speaking work, the examples she brings to audiences reflect live challenges rather than archived successes. She also founded the Executive Growth Alliance, a community of F100 leaders using collaborative challenge-resolution as a vehicle for building future-readiness collectively. Her book Emergence: How Leaders Break Free from Outdated Thinking (Wiley, October 2026), endorsed by Thinkers50 co-founder Stuart Crainer, extends the framework into a broader argument about the leadership models that are no longer fit for purpose, and what replaces them. Key speaking topics AI Adoption and Human-Centred Integration Change Leadership and Organisational Transformation Future of Work and Generational Integration The P.E.A.C.E. Framework for Leading Through Change Silicon Valley Innovation Applied to Global Business Business Model Redesign in an AI Era Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams navigating business model transformation or AI adoption programmes Boards and executive committees seeking a working practitioner’s perspective on AI-era leadership CHROs and people leaders managing generational integration, workforce redesign, and future-of-work strategy Transformation leads and change management functions inside large multinational organisations Audience outcomes A structured, repeatable framework (P.E.A.C.E.) that gives teams shared language for leading through uncertainty, usable Monday morning A clear diagnosis of why AI adoption and transformation programmes stall at the leadership level, with specific approaches to address it Practical tools for integrating generational diversity, particularly Gen Z talent alongside experienced human capital and AI capability A first-hand view of how organisations including Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia are integrating people with advanced technology, applied to the audience’s own market A mindset shift from defending what is crumbling to building what is emerging, positioning disruption as a source of competitive advantage

Why organisations work with Julie Holmes She gives leaders a way past the trap most AI programmes fall into. Second Story Strategy™, her framework, treats AI as a starting line for distinct new value, not a finish line for cost savings. She has built and sold technology, not just studied it. Two innovation companies and products in over 60 countries give her keynotes the texture of an operator, and she still builds AI applications for herself and clients today. Her material works at two stages: helping teams who are still becoming AI-capable, and pushing teams who have already proven AI makes them faster toward the harder question of what they will do with it that no one else can. PSA-UKI Hall of Fame status puts her among 33 speakers recognised for sustained craft on stage, which matters when the brief is a high-stakes leadership audience with mixed AI fluency in the room. She lectures on innovation and AI at Yale, Birkbeck, and the American University of Beirut, keeping the material tested against faculty and students as well as paying clients. Biography highlights Hall of Fame Speaker, PSA-UKI, one of 33 to hold the honour Originator of Second Story Strategy™ and the Second Story Blueprint for building competitive advantage on top of AI Author of Little Big Bangs for Leaders and of the 101+ AI Tips, Tools and Prompts series for leaders and sales professionals Founder of two innovation companies with products distributed in over 60 countries Clients include Oracle, Expedia, American Express, JetBlue, Nestle, EY, VMware, US Bank, and LinkedIn Guest lecturer at Yale, Birkbeck (University of London), and the American University of Beirut Biography AI is raising the floor for everyone. The same models, agents, and automation reach every competitor in a category at roughly the same time. That makes it easy to be good, and good is no longer a position. It is the new baseline. Julie Holmes works on the question that follows: once everyone is faster, what will your organisation be that no one else can be? Her answer is Second Story Strategy™, a framework drawn from studying which companies actually pull ahead with AI and which simply run harder in place. The pattern she found was not about budget or engineering depth. The standouts treated AI as a foundation and built something distinct on top of it, working through four levels she maps as Build, Reimagine, Extend, and Lead, with the organisation’s own distinctiveness as the load-bearing element running through all of them. Her credibility comes from building, not commenting. Holmes founded two innovation companies and shipped products into more than 60 countries, and she still builds AI applications for herself and clients. That operator history shapes how she talks to senior audiences. The diagnosis is practical, the language is plain, and her work extends into resources leaders can use directly, including the regularly updated 101+ AI Tips, Tools and Prompts series. Holmes is a Hall of Fame Speaker with PSA-UKI, one of 33 to hold the honour, and a guest lecturer at Yale, Birkbeck, and the American University of Beirut. Brands including Oracle, Expedia, JetBlue, Nestle, EY, and LinkedIn have brought her in for the same reason: to move AI from a tool that makes them cheaper to a foundation that makes them distinct. Key speaking topics Second Story Strategy™ and competitive advantage through AI AI strategy and enterprise adoption AI-empowered teams and workflows Innovation as a leadership discipline Sales and customer experience under AI Future of work and AI capability building Ideal for C-suite leaders setting enterprise AI direction Heads of department helping their teams level up with AI Sales and customer-experience leaders integrating AI into commercial workflows Company-wide events where AI fluency varies widely across the room Audience outcomes The five behaviours that set AI-savvy teams apart, framed as a Second Story Strategy™ they can act on A clear way to decide where to build genuine distinction and where keeping pace is enough Concrete examples of how AI is reshaping leadership, sales, and customer experience, with specific tools named Language for leading non-technical teams into AI with confidence rather than anxiety A sharper sense of which AI use cases build advantage and which only add speed

Why organisations work with Mark DeVolder A practising change consultant with a named methodology, Empowered Change, used inside organisations from NASA to Coca-Cola, not a motivational speaker who borrows the language of change. Author of Perpetual Pivot, a book-length argument that continuous adaptation is now the default operating condition, with a defined construct leaders can apply to repeated reinvention. Holds a research doctorate on unity, diversity and synergy from Fuller, which gives the work an evidence base most change keynotes lack. Has worked with leadership teams in regulated, high-stakes environments such as Pfizer, Qatar Petroleum, Siemens and the US Air Force, where the cost of badly handled change is operational, not theoretical. Brings a Target Zero safety-culture frame for clients in industrial and engineering sectors where change failure shows up as incidents, not engagement scores. Biography highlights Doctorate, Fuller, with dissertation on unity, diversity and synergy. Founder of the Empowered Change methodology, used in client engagements across five continents. Author of Perpetual Pivot: How the Best Leaders Adapt to Exponential Change and Get Engaged! on employee engagement. Has spoken in over 25 countries to clients including NASA, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Siemens, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Canada, Verizon, Medtronic, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Qatar Petroleum and the US Air Force. Signature talks on change, resilience, employee engagement and Target Zero safety culture. Biography Change has become the operating condition of large organisations, not the event between strategies. The leaders who hold their teams through repeated restructure, integration and digital reset are not the ones with the most polished communications plan. They are the ones who understand how people move through transition and can hold the line on engagement when the next wave arrives. This is the territory Mark DeVolder has worked in for two decades. His Empowered Change methodology and the wider argument set out in Perpetual Pivot: How the Best Leaders Adapt to Exponential Change treat continuous adaptation as the default state of senior leadership. The work is built on a doctorate from Fuller on unity, diversity and synergy, which gives the practice a research base rather than a personality base. Client engagements have included leadership teams at NASA, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Siemens, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Canada, Verizon, Medtronic, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Qatar Petroleum, alongside the US Air Force. The work spans corporate integration, regulated industry, industrial safety and public-sector transformation, which means the methodology has been tested against very different definitions of what a failed change actually costs. For industrial and engineering clients, DeVolder also runs a Target Zero programme that frames change leadership as a safety-culture problem. In those settings the test of good change leadership is not employee survey scores; it is whether the operating environment becomes safer or more dangerous through the transition. That is a sharper test than most change keynotes are built to pass. Key speaking topics Change management and organisational transition Leadership through continuous restructure Resilience and decision-making under pressure Employee engagement during transformation Safety culture and high-performance operating environments Adapting to exponential change Ideal for Boards and executive teams entering or recovering from major restructure, M&A integration or digital reset. CHROs and transformation leads accountable for retaining trust and discretionary effort through repeated change. Operating leaders in regulated, industrial or safety-critical sectors where change failure shows up as incidents, not survey scores. Senior leadership development programmes building change-leadership capability across cohorts. Audience outcomes A clearer view of why repeated change erodes capability and what to protect first. A practical model, the Empowered Change journey-map, for diagnosing where a workforce sits in a transition. Specific behaviours senior leaders can adopt during continuous restructure to hold trust and engagement. Language to talk to a workforce about change without slipping into corporate abstraction. For industrial clients, a route to connect change leadership directly to safety performance.

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

Why organisations work with Caroline Criado-Perez She built the public evidence base on the gender data gap. Invisible Women sits on the desks of regulators, engineers, and policy teams in more than thirty languages and is the default reference when the question is raised. She has won both the Royal Society Science Book Prize and the FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year for the same work, a combination almost no other author can claim, and one that signals her rigour to both technical and commercial audiences. She translates the gender data problem into concrete operating examples: car crash test dummies, medical dosing, voice recognition, AI training data, urban infrastructure, workplace tools. Audiences leave with examples they recognise from their own organisation. She has actually changed policy. The Jane Austen banknote and the Millicent Fawcett statue are her campaigns; the credibility she brings to a corporate room is built on shifting state institutions, not commentary. Biography highlights Author, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, winner of the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize and the 2019 FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. OBE for services to equality and diversity, 2015. Author, Do It Like a Woman, profiling pioneering women globally. Founder of the campaigns that put Jane Austen on the Bank of England £10 note and Millicent Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square. Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year, 2013; Finland’s HÄN Honour, 2020; winner of the inaugural Unwin Award, 2025. Honorary doctorates from the University of Lincoln, the University of Westminster, and The Open University. Host of the Visible Women podcast with Tortoise Media; writes the Invisible Women Substack newsletter. Biography The crash test dummy used to certify most cars on the road is modelled on the body of an average male. Medical drug trials, voice recognition systems, office temperatures, and stab vests share a similar history. Invisible Women assembled this evidence into a single argument and made it impossible to ignore. Caroline Criado-Perez wrote the book that did this. It won the Royal Society Science Book Prize and the FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year in the same year, a dual recognition that signals scientific rigour and commercial relevance at once. It has been translated into more than thirty languages and is used by policymakers, engineers, and product teams looking for a defensible account of where their data is incomplete. Her credibility with corporate audiences comes from changing institutions, not commenting on them. She ran the campaign that placed Jane Austen on the Bank of England £10 note. She campaigned for the Millicent Fawcett statue in Parliament Square, the first statue of a woman to stand there. An OBE, a Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year award, and the inaugural Unwin Award are the public record of work that altered what the state chose to put in front of its citizens. Her current focus is on the operating consequences of the data gap for businesses making decisions about AI, product design, workforce policy, and customer experience. Through her Invisible Women Substack and Visible Women podcast with Tortoise Media, she continues to surface the specific cases where missing data on women becomes a material business risk. Key speaking topics The gender data gap Bias in AI training data and algorithmic systems Inclusive product and service design Workforce data and policy design Gender bias in medical and safety research Campaigning, influence, and institutional change Ideal for CHROs, chief diversity officers, and people analytics leaders auditing workforce data Heads of product, design, and data science teams in consumer-facing or safety-critical industries AI and machine learning leaders responsible for model bias and training data quality Boards and ESG committees reviewing how the organisation evidences its claims about inclusion Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for naming where the gender data gap shows up in their own products, policies, and decisions A clear view of the commercial and safety risks created by data that under-represents half the customer or workforce base Specific examples from medicine, automotive, technology, and infrastructure that translate the problem into terms their teams will recognise An understanding of how AI inherits and amplifies existing data bias, and what that means for governance A grounded sense of how institutional change actually happens, drawn from campaigns that succeeded