Workforce Transformation

Why organisations work with Keely Cat-Wells She has built and sold the category. C Talent, the agency she founded in 2018, was acquired by Whalar in 2022 and remains the largest exit of a Disabled-led talent business in the sector. Her current company, Making Space, gives leaders an operating model rather than a manifesto: an employer-backed training and acquisition platform with reported lifetime earnings gains of more than $1.1M per learner. She speaks from inside the boardroom conversation, not next to it. As a Presidential Leadership Scholar, Obama Leader USA, and Forbes contributor, she carries credibility with executive audiences who are tired of generic DEI framing. She connects representation in media to talent strategy in the workforce, drawing on a roster that has placed Disabled creators in projects including The Last of Us, Avatar, and The Hunger Games. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Making Space, a venture-backed talent acquisition and learning platform for Disabled professionals. Founder of C Talent, acquired by Whalar in 2022. Co-founder, Making Space Media, with a first-look deal at Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. 2025 Presidential Leadership Scholar, 2025 Obama Leader USA, inaugural Gloria Steinem Fellow. L’Oreal Paris 2025 Women of Worth, Forbes 30 Under 30, Diana Award, One Young World Entrepreneur of the Year 2022. Forbes contributor on disability, entrepreneurship, and inclusive workforce strategy. Biography The Disabled talent pool is one of the largest underused labour markets in the global economy. Most companies do not have a working strategy for reaching it. Keely Cat-Wells builds the infrastructure that closes that gap. She founded C Talent in 2018 after disability discrimination ended an early career in performing arts. The agency grew into the most prominent home for Deaf and Disabled creators in entertainment, placing talent in The Last of Us, Avatar, and The Hunger Games before being acquired by Whalar in 2022. It remains the largest exit of a Disabled-led talent business in the industry. Making Space, founded in 2023, is the operator-led answer to a different question: how do enterprise employers actually hire and retain Disabled professionals at scale. The platform pairs employer-backed training with talent acquisition, and closed a $2M pre-seed round led by Beta Boom in 2024. Its Ascend program reports projected lifetime earnings gains of more than $1.1M per participant. Cat-Wells writes for Forbes, sits on disability-focused boards, and was named the youngest Presidential Leadership Scholar in the program’s history. Her recognitions include the Diana Award, Forbes 30 Under 30, L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth, and Gloria Steinem Fellow. The credentials matter, but the harder evidence is the line item her work creates on a hiring scorecard. Key speaking topics Disability and workforce strategy Hiring and retaining Disabled professionals Inclusive talent acquisition platforms Representation in media and entertainment Building and scaling mission-led ventures Hidden disabilities in the workplace Founder experience in inclusive entrepreneurship Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent acquisition rebuilding disability hiring strategy Chief diversity and inclusion officers moving from awareness work to operational outcomes Boards and ELTs reviewing workforce, ESG, and human capital reporting Media, entertainment, and creative leaders accountable for on-screen and off-screen representation Audience outcomes A clearer view of where disability inclusion programmes break in practice and what to fix first. Specific tactics for sourcing, onboarding, and retaining Disabled professionals at enterprise scale. A founder’s view of how to translate inclusion strategy into measurable economic outcomes. Language and evidence senior leaders can use with their own boards on disability as a workforce issue.

Why organisations work with Anne-Marie Imafidon She has run the experiment at scale. Stemettes has engaged more than 60,000 young women and non-binary young people across the UK, Ireland and Europe since 2013, giving her a live evidence base on what moves technical participation and what does not. Her technical credibility is not borrowed. Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science from Oxford at 20, Honorary Fellow of Keble College, and guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown for 60 episodes, so technical audiences engage her as a peer rather than an advocate. She sits inside the UK policy conversation on digital skills. Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, 2022-2023 President of the British Science Association, and DSIT Women in Tech Envoy, which gives leaders a direct line to how regulation and industrial strategy are likely to land. She has a published thesis. She’s In CTRL (Transworld, 2022) argues that women need to take back tech as users, builders and decision-makers; that frame is portable into strategy conversations about product, customer and workforce. She is comfortable in front of non-technical boards. Her broadcast work and Chancellorship of Glasgow Caledonian University mean she translates between technical reality and senior decision-maker vocabulary without losing either. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Stemettes, social enterprise founded in 2013 that has reached 60,000+ young women and non-binary young people across the UK, Ireland and Europe. Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Oxford, aged 20; Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford. Appointed MBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to young women and STEM. Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University; 2022-2023 President of the British Science Association; Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work. Author of She’s In CTRL: How Women Can Take Back Tech (Transworld, 2022). Guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown across 60 episodes (2021-2022), first Black woman to take the Countdown board; voted Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Woman in UK Tech (2020); Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech. DSIT Women in Tech Envoy, co-chairing a UK government Taskforce with the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (2025). Biography Stemettes was set up in 2013 after its co-founder returned from the Grace Hopper Celebration in 2012 and decided the UK needed its own infrastructure for girls in STEM. More than 60,000 young women and non-binary young people have passed through its programmes since, across the UK, Ireland and Europe. That operating record is the spine of Anne-Marie Imafidon’s authority on technology talent. The technical credentials are unusual. Imafidon took her Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science at Oxford at 20, is an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, and was the guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown for 60 episodes in 2021 and 2022, the first Black woman to run the Countdown board. She was appointed MBE in 2017 for services to young women and STEM. Her public roles put her inside the UK conversation on digital skills and industrial strategy. She is Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University, Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, served as President of the British Science Association in 2022-2023, and in 2025 was appointed the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Women in Tech Envoy, co-chairing a Taskforce with the Secretary of State. Her book She’s In CTRL, published by Transworld in 2022, argues that women should treat technology as something to take control of, not just consume or be represented within. For senior leaders it reframes the DEI-in-tech conversation as a product and capability question: who builds the tools, who governs them, and whose problems they get designed to solve. Key speaking topics Women and underrepresented groups in STEM Technology talent pipelines and digital skills Future of work and AI Inclusive product and technology design Social entrepreneurship at scale UK digital policy and industrial strategy Responsible and inclusive AI Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and heads of talent building technology hiring pipelines beyond the usual funnel. CTOs, CDIOs and engineering leaders under pressure to improve retention and representation in technical teams. Boards and ExCos setting policy on AI, digital skills and workforce strategy, particularly in regulated sectors. Corporate foundations, ESG leads and public-sector partners designing STEM and social mobility interventions. Audience outcomes A sharper read on why conventional diversity-in-tech programmes under-deliver and where the real intervention points sit. A working vocabulary for discussing inclusive AI and technology design at board level without defaulting to platitudes. Concrete examples, drawn from Stemettes and UK policy work, of what moves technical participation and retention. A reframe of women-in-tech as a product, governance and capability issue, not only a hiring issue. A sense of how UK digital skills policy and regulation are likely to shape talent strategy over the next cycle.

Key speaking topics Organisational simplification Innovation strategy Reducing workplace complexity Challenging the status quo Leadership and ways of working Creating space for meaningful work Ideal for Senior leadership teams Strategy and transformation leaders Innovation and change teams Corporate conference audiences Audience outcomes Clear understanding of how complexity limits innovation Practical approaches to simplifying processes and priorities Tools to challenge outdated practices and assumptions Greater clarity on creating space for higher-value work Why organisations work with Lisa Bodell Combines leadership experience with published research and practical frameworks. Brings a clear focus on simplification as a driver of innovation and performance. Experienced in working with large organisations across sectors. Provides structured thinking that supports strategic change initiatives. Biography Lisa Bodell works with organisations that want to remove unnecessary complexity and create the conditions for meaningful innovation. As founder and CEO of FutureThink, she advises and speaks to senior leaders on how to simplify strategy, streamline ways of working and unlock higher-value performance. Her work centres on challenging entrenched practices and helping organisations rethink how decisions are made, how time is spent and how priorities are set. Through keynote presentations and advisory engagements, she equips leadership teams with practical approaches to reducing friction and focusing on what matters most. Bodell is the author of Kill the Company and Why Simple Wins, both published by Routledge, where she explores how organisations can escape the complexity trap and build cultures that encourage innovation and accountability. Her ideas on simplification and change have reached global audiences, including through her TEDx talk on how simplification drives meaningful transformation. In addition to her books and speaking engagements, she writes as a Forbes contributor on topics including innovation, leadership and organisational effectiveness. She works with large organisations across sectors, supporting leaders who are navigating growth, transformation and the need to modernise how work gets done.

Why organisations work with Barbara Oakley Her “focused mode/diffuse mode” framework gives L&D teams a named, neuroscience-backed model for redesigning how training is structured, not just what it covers. It establishes that structured recovery and retrieval practice matter as much as instruction time, a claim with direct implications for how organisations budget and sequence learning investment. “Learning How to Learn,” co-created with Salk Institute neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, has been taken by over 4 million people on Coursera. That scale of real-world adoption gives her frameworks empirical grounding that no controlled study can fully replicate. Her personal trajectory from U.S. Army linguist to engineering professor, achieved through deliberate adult retraining, is the primary evidence for her central argument that capability can be built at any career stage. For organisations running reskilling programmes, that is more persuasive than theory from a researcher who has never made the journey themselves. “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), a New York Times bestseller translated into 13 languages with over 1 million copies sold, means her frameworks already have traction well beyond corporate learning circles. Audiences often arrive familiar with her work, reducing the credibility gap that typically slows training adoption. The 2023 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, administered through the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and widely considered the field’s most prestigious award, recognised Oakley as the inaugural winner in a new Lifelong Learning category – independent confirmation that her contribution to continuous capability development is field-defining. Biography highlights Distinguished Professor of Engineering, Oakland University; Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning, McMaster University Inaugural winner of the 2023 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education (Lifelong Learning category), administered through the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education Co-creator (with neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, Salk Institute) of “Learning How to Learn” on Coursera – over 4 million enrolled, one of the most widely taken courses in the history of online education Author of “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), a New York Times bestselling science book translated into 13 languages with over 1 million copies sold; subsequent titles include “Mindshift” (2017), “Uncommon Sense Teaching” (2021), and “Learn Like a Pro” (2021) Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal; Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year (2018) Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering; Coursera’s inaugural “Innovation Instructor” Former U.S. Army Captain; recognised as Distinguished Military Scholar Biography In 2014, a Coursera course called “Learning How to Learn” attracted over 300,000 students in its first three runs. It now has over 4 million enrolled, making it one of the most widely taken courses in the history of online education. That appetite reflects a gap most organisational training does not close: a practical understanding of how capability is actually built. Barbara Oakley created that course with neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski of the Salk Institute. She came to the research through direct experience: a former U.S. Army Captain trained as a linguist, she retaught herself mathematics and engineering entirely as an adult. Her own career transition is the most direct demonstration of her central argument – that capability is genuinely malleable, and that the brain can acquire new domains of expertise at any career stage. Her “focused mode/diffuse mode” framework, named in “A Mind for Numbers” (Penguin, 2014), gives organisations a practical model for how concentration, structured recovery, and retrieval interact in the learning process. The book reached New York Times bestseller status and has been translated into 13 languages. Subsequent titles including “Mindshift,” “Uncommon Sense Teaching,” and “Learn Like a Pro” extend the framework into career reinvention, teaching design, and AI-era learning. In 2023, she received the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, the most prestigious award in the field, as inaugural winner in a newly created Lifelong Learning category. She is Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Oakland University and holds a concurrent appointment as Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning at McMaster University. Key speaking topics The neuroscience of effective learning and skill retention Workforce reskilling and adult capability development Learning frameworks for the age of AI Building organisational learning culture Career reinvention and professional mindset The science of effective training design Cognitive performance and focus at work Ideal for CHROs and L&D directors designing or auditing workforce capability programmes CEOs and executive teams navigating AI-driven workforce transition and reskilling investment Corporate universities and internal learning academies benchmarking training effectiveness Boards and transformation leads sponsoring large-scale reskilling or career transition initiatives Audience outcomes A named neuroscience framework (focused vs. diffuse mode) for understanding how attention, structured recovery, and retrieval interact in the learning process Evidence-based techniques (retrieval practice, spaced repetition, the Pomodoro method) that individuals and teams can apply immediately to improve learning retention A reframe of learning ability from fixed trait to trainable skill, with direct implications for how organisations identify, develop, and retain talent Clarity on why conventional training approaches consistently underdeliver, and what research-supported alternatives look like in practice A grounded argument for why adult capability development is achievable at any career stage, drawn from both neuroscience and the speaker’s own documented transition

Why organisations work with Amy Cappellanti-Wolf She has held the CHRO seat at Dayforce, Cohesity, Symantec and Silver Spring Networks, including taking Silver Spring Networks public on the NYSE in 2013. Her HR career runs from Frito-Lay and The Walt Disney Company through Sun Microsystems and Cisco, so she can speak credibly to consumer, entertainment and enterprise tech leadership teams in their own language. At Dayforce she runs people strategy at an HR technology vendor and acts as “Customer Zero” for the company’s AI-powered HR releases, which gives her an unusually concrete view of where AI lands in real HR operations. She works at board and committee level on talent and rewards, currently as Compensation Committee Chair at Softchoice and as a director or advisor at D-Wave Quantum, Betterworks and Wellist. Recognised externally on people and tech leadership: National Diversity Council Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology, Silicon Valley Business Journal Women of Influence, and the Forbes Human Resources Council. Biography highlights EVP and Chief People Officer, Dayforce, since April 2024. Former CHRO at Cohesity, Symantec and Silver Spring Networks; led people strategy through Silver Spring Networks’ 2013 IPO. Earlier senior HR roles at Cisco Systems (2001 to 2009), Sun Microsystems, The Walt Disney Company and Frito-Lay (PepsiCo). Compensation Committee Chair at Softchoice (TSX: SFTC); board and advisory roles at D-Wave Quantum, Betterworks and Wellist. Forbes Human Resources Council member since 2018; National Diversity Council Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology. Inducted into the Roll of Distinguished Alumni, WVU’s John Chambers College of Business and Economics, in 2019. Biography Few CHROs have stood in the room for a Cisco-era leadership build, a Disney creative organisation, a Symantec security business and a Silver Spring Networks IPO. Amy Cappellanti-Wolf has. That cross-section is what gives her practical authority on what culture and talent actually take when a company changes shape. Her current seat sharpens the point. As EVP and Chief People Officer at Dayforce, she runs people strategy inside an HR technology vendor and uses Dayforce’s own platform as “Customer Zero” for AI-powered HR releases. That gives her a working view of where AI lands in payroll, performance and workforce planning, not as a forecast but as a live deployment. Boards use her where rewards, governance and people risk meet. She chairs the Compensation Committee at Softchoice, sits on the board at D-Wave Quantum, and advises Betterworks and Wellist. Her recognition track record, Forbes HR Council, the National Diversity Council Top 50 in Technology, Silicon Valley Business Journal Women of Influence, sits alongside the operating record, not in place of it. For senior buyers, the practical value is specific. She can talk credibly to a CHRO planning an IPO, a CEO integrating an acquisition, an HR team rebuilding engagement after a restructure, or a board asking what AI in HR really changes. The answers come from having done it, not from observing it. Key speaking topics People strategy through IPO, M&A and divestiture AI in HR and the future of the people function High-performance culture in scaling tech companies Diversity, equity and inclusion as an operating discipline Leadership and talent for enterprise transformation The CHRO as a board-level voice on people risk Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders preparing for IPO, M&A or large-scale restructure CEOs and boards weighing the people implications of AI deployment in core operations Compensation and talent committees considering rewards, succession and culture risk Technology, consumer and entertainment leadership teams running concurrent transformations Audience outcomes A clear sense of how to sequence people priorities through IPO, integration and restructure A practical view of where AI changes HR operations now, drawn from a live enterprise deployment Sharper questions for boards and executive teams on culture, rewards and talent risk Concrete language for inclusion outcomes that survive a politically contested environment

Why organisations work with Sir Stuart Hampson He chaired the John Lewis Partnership from 1993 to 2007 through one of the most significant modernisation programmes in UK retail, including the Oxford Street and Sloane Square refurbishments, extended trading hours and the launch of John Lewis Direct and Ocado, with pre-tax profit reaching £319 million in 2006. As President of the Employee Ownership Association, he carries both the operator’s and the sector advocate’s view of employee ownership, rather than a textbook one. The public-office record, including chairmanship of The Crown Estate from 2010 to 2016, a CVO and a Deputy Lieutenancy of Buckinghamshire, gives him credibility in front of public-sector and regulated-industry audiences that most business speakers cannot match. His career trajectory, from the UK Civil Service to John Lewis and back into public office, allows him to speak fluently to audiences on both sides of the public-private divide. He has been on the corporate speaking circuit since 2009 and delivers sessions in English and French, useful for pan-European events. Biography highlights Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, 1993 to 2007; joined the Partnership in 1982 Knighted for services to retailing, 1998; Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, 2016 Non-executive Chairman and First Commissioner of The Crown Estate, 2010 to 2016 President of the Employee Ownership Association; founding Deputy Chairman of London First Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford; honorary doctorate in Business Administration, Kingston University Earlier career in the UK Civil Service, rising to Assistant Secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry Biography Britain’s most-cited example of employee ownership is the John Lewis Partnership, and the chairman who led it through its transition into the modern retail economy is Sir Stuart Hampson. He joined the Partnership in 1982, became Chairman in 1993, and held the role for fourteen years, through the refurbishment of the flagship Oxford Street and Sloane Square stores, extended trading hours, the expansion of the product range and the creation of John Lewis Direct and Ocado. By 2006 the Partnership was reporting pre-tax profits of £319 million, 27 per cent up on the previous year. His route into the role was unusual. He began his career in the UK Civil Service in 1969 at the Board of Trade and rose to Assistant Secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry before moving to John Lewis. That grounding informs how he thinks about governance, employee voice and the relationship between public purpose and commercial return. The knighthood in 1998 recognised the retailing side of that work. A Commander of the Royal Victorian Order followed in 2016, the year his term chairing The Crown Estate came to an end, a role he had held since 2010. The advocacy role has been consistent throughout. He is President of the Employee Ownership Association, a founding Deputy Chairman of London First, a former President of the Royal Agricultural Society of England and a former Prince of Wales Ambassador for Economic Renewal. The academic link is through St John’s College, Oxford, where he studied and is now a Fellow, and Kingston University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1998. For leadership teams, remuneration committees and HR functions looking at employee ownership, engagement and the commercial case for a partnership model, Hampson brings the rarest thing in the field: a first-hand account of what it looks like to run the institution that every UK executive cites when they use the phrase. He has been on the speaking circuit since 2009, delivering sessions in English and French. Key speaking topics Employee ownership and engagement at scale Culture and commercial performance in retail Governance in employee-owned businesses Leadership transitions and executive succession Public-private leadership: lessons from civil service and commercial roles Modernisation of long-established institutions Ideal for Boards and chief executives considering, defending or reforming an employee-ownership or partnership model CHROs, remuneration and engagement leaders looking to ground their strategy in a named, credible reference case Retail, consumer-goods and services leadership teams managing cultural transformation alongside modernisation Public-sector leaders and institutional boards seeking an experienced chair perspective on governance and purpose Audience outcomes A practitioner’s view of how employee ownership and engagement connect to commercial performance, drawn from fourteen years chairing the John Lewis Partnership Reference cases on the Oxford Street and Sloane Square modernisations and the launch of John Lewis Direct and Ocado A clearer framing of the governance trade-offs inside partnership and ownership models Perspective on the civil-service-to-commercial-leadership transition that is useful to organisations at the regulator-private sector boundary

Why organisations work with Seth Mattison His book The War at Work, co-authored with Joshua Medcalf, frames the cultural and structural tension between the traditional hierarchy and the emerging network, which is the underlying shape of most workforce disputes leaders are now managing. As a Strategic Partner at BridgeWorks, the firm that helped define generational diversity consulting, he works inside the practitioner tradition rather than commenting on it from the outside. His client list is unusual in its breadth: MasterCard, Microsoft, AT&T, PepsiCo, Morgan Stanley, Berkshire Hathaway, Dow, Disney and the Dallas Cowboys, which means his material has been calibrated across consumer, technology, financial services, industrial and entertainment audiences. He is a main-stage speaker first, with an Editors’ Picks Speaker to Watch selection and published quotes in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur and The Globe and Mail, which is useful for all-hands, sales kick-offs and customer conferences. He combines data-heavy content on workforce trends with a storyteller’s register, which keeps Gen Z and boomer audiences in the same session without patronising either. Biography highlights Co-Founder and CEO of Luminate Labs; Strategic Partner at BridgeWorks Co-author of The War at Work with Joshua Medcalf Expert on generational workforce dynamics, future of work and talent management Published and quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur and The Globe and Mail Named clients include MasterCard, Microsoft, AT&T, PepsiCo, Morgan Stanley, Berkshire Hathaway, Dow, Disney, Johnson & Johnson, IBM and the Dallas Cowboys Editors’ Picks Speaker to Watch Biography Four generations are now working alongside each other in most major organisations, and the assumptions each has brought to the table about loyalty, hierarchy and flexibility are pulling in different directions. Seth Mattison has spent almost two decades working on that gap. As Co-Founder and CEO of Luminate Labs and a Strategic Partner at BridgeWorks, the consulting firm that helped define the generational-diversity category, he works with senior leaders on the specific changes that multi-generational and post-hierarchical workplaces require. The War at Work, co-authored with Joshua Medcalf, is the most accessible expression of his argument. Written as a fable, it lays out the tension between the traditional hierarchy and the emerging network inside modern organisations, and the unwritten rules leaders need to understand to manage both. The book is widely used in leadership programmes, and it is the same argument his keynotes are built on. The client list runs across industries that rarely share a training vendor: MasterCard, Microsoft, AT&T, PepsiCo, GE Energy, Cisco, Morgan Stanley, Berkshire Hathaway, Dow, Disney, Johnson & Johnson, IBM and the Dallas Cowboys. His work has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur and The Globe and Mail, and he has been selected as an Editors’ Picks Speaker to Watch. For CHROs, chief talent officers and executive committees trying to build a leadership pipeline that spans Gen Z through boomers, Mattison offers something most generational speakers do not: a main-stage performer backed by a consulting practice and a published book, with a client footprint that shows the argument holds up across sectors. Key speaking topics Generational dynamics and the multigenerational workplace Future of work and the shift from hierarchy to network Talent management and high-performance culture Sales and leadership in the new workforce Next-generation leadership development Change and transformation in the people system Ideal for CHROs, chief talent officers and HR leadership teams designing multigenerational workforce strategy Sales, revenue and commercial leadership teams adapting to new buyer and workforce dynamics All-hands, kick-offs and customer or partner conferences where a main-stage future-of-work voice is needed Leadership programmes and corporate universities running high-potential and next-generation cohorts Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the tension between hierarchy and network inside their own organisation A clearer view of what drives and derails each generational cohort at work, drawn from BridgeWorks practice and Mattison’s own research Specific prompts for updating leadership, sales and talent practices for a post-hierarchical workforce Case material from named Fortune 500 engagements usable as reference cases in the audience’s own context

Why organisations work with Richard Florida His “three Ts” framework (technology, talent, tolerance) remains the most cited model in talent geography, drawn on by city governments and corporate location strategists worldwide. He named and quantified the creative class, the 40-million-strong workforce whose location and lifestyle decisions now drive regional economic growth. Through the Creative Class Group, he has advised BMW, Audi, Microsoft, Facebook, and Starwood Hotels, alongside city and regional governments worldwide. He co-founded CityLab, now owned by Bloomberg, and contributes regularly to The Atlantic and the Financial Times. His 2017 book The New Urban Crisis examined how the same forces driving creative-economy growth also produce inequality and segregation, giving leaders a more honest account of the trade-offs in talent-led strategies. Biography highlights University Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities, which he helped found Visiting Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management Author of The Rise of the Creative Class, winner of the Washington Monthly Political Book Award and a Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Idea of 2004 Co-founder of CityLab, now owned by Bloomberg Ranked #19 on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s most influential management thinkers in 2017 Founder of the Creative Class Group, advising BMW, Audi, Microsoft, Facebook, and Starwood Hotels Biography Talent used to follow jobs. Florida’s research, beginning with his 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, demonstrated that the relationship had reversed. The most ambitious workers were now choosing cities first, gravitating to those that combined what he called the three Ts: technology, talent, and tolerance. The Rise of the Creative Class won the Washington Monthly Political Book Award and was named a Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Idea of 2004. The book quantified a workforce of 40 million Americans whose decisions about where to live were beginning to drive regional economies. It became the foundation for how cities and large employers think about competing for human capital. His 2017 book The New Urban Crisis confronted what creative-economy growth had produced. In cities like New York, San Francisco, and London, the same forces driving wealth creation were also increasing inequality, deepening segregation, and hollowing out the middle class. Florida calls this winner-take-all urbanism. The book gave civic and corporate leaders a sharper account of the trade-offs in talent-led growth. Florida is University Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities, which he helped found. He is also Visiting Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management and a Distinguished Fellow at NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. Through the Creative Class Group he has advised BMW, Audi, Microsoft, Facebook, and Starwood Hotels on talent and location strategy. Key speaking topics The creative class and the geography of talent Talent attraction and retention in the post-industrial economy Cities as engines of growth and inequality Real estate and corporate location strategy in the creative economy Innovation and the conditions that produce it The future of work in superstar cities Ideal for Chief Human Resources Officers and heads of talent making decisions about where to recruit, locate, and build culture Real estate developers, REITs, and corporate location strategists City leaders, mayors, and economic development agencies competing for investment and talent Boards and CEOs of large employers reassessing geographic footprint after the shift to hybrid work Audience outcomes Florida’s creative class framework, including who it covers and where the category is now concentrated globally Detailed data on which cities and regions are gaining and losing talent right now A diagnosis of why creative-economy growth also generates inequality and segregation, and what cities are doing in response Specific implications for location and recruitment strategy in their own organisation

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

Why organisations work with Marc Descheemaecker He has done the thing that most change management speakers have only studied: turned around a nationally significant, politically exposed, heavily unionised institution, with verifiable numbers. That gives him a standing in board and C-suite conversations that credentialed academics cannot replicate. His SNCB experience surfaces a distinction most transformation programmes ignore: the difference between change in organisations that can move freely and change in organisations that cannot. Leaders in regulated industries, public bodies, and large state-influenced enterprises hear something they rarely get: a framework built for their actual constraints. Having chaired Brussels Airport during the 2016 terrorist attacks, he brings direct experience of leadership under acute operational crisis, not as a crisis consultant but as the person publicly accountable for the institution’s response and recovery. His simultaneous positions across a national railway, a national bus operator, Brussels Airport, the European Investment Bank, and the European Investment Fund gave him a view few practitioners hold: where European capital allocation meets national infrastructure governance, and where the two pull in opposite directions. Career that moved from McKinsey analysis through consumer goods and facilities services to four major European transport institutions gives him a genuine cross-sector perspective on operational transformation. He is not a transport specialist; he is a change practitioner who happened to work in transport. Biography highlights CEO, NMBS-SNCB (Belgian national railway), 2004–2013: grew passenger numbers by 60%, reduced workforce by approximately 20% Turned loss-making Belgian operations of Thalys and Eurostar into a profitable shareholding; oversaw the separation and partial sale of the SNCB freight division Chairman, Brussels Airport Company (BAC), 2013–2021 Chairman, De Lijn (Belgian national bus and tram operator), 2016–2022 Director, European Investment Bank (EIB), 2015–2022; Director, European Investment Fund (EIF), 2016–2022 Board member, Gimv NV (listed Belgian investment company) Postgraduate in European Economics, College of Europe, Bruges; Master in Business Economics (cum laude), UFSIA University Antwerp; career began at McKinsey Amsterdam Biography Belgium’s national railway was losing passengers and carrying a workforce structure it could no longer sustain when Marc Descheemaecker was appointed CEO in 2004. Over nine years, he reversed both. Ridership grew by 60%. The workforce reduced by almost 20%. Neither result was achieved by bypassing the constraints that define a state-owned enterprise. They were achieved by understanding them precisely, and leading within them. The SNCB work went beyond the headline numbers. The Belgian operations of Thalys and Eurostar were structurally loss-making; Descheemaecker restructured them into a profitable shareholding. The freight division, a separate challenge, was carved out as an independent entity and partly sold to a financial partner. These were not sequential projects. They ran concurrently, each requiring negotiation across government ministries, unions, and private capital. His subsequent board positions; Chairman of Brussels Airport Company, Chairman of De Lijn, Director at the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund extended that operational picture into institutional governance. Few practitioners have seen, from the inside, how capital decisions at European level translate into choices on the ground at a national transport authority. He has sat on both sides of the table. His academic formation; Master in Business Economics (cum laude) from UFSIA Antwerp, postgraduate in European Economics from the College of Europe in Bruges gave him the analytical base. The McKinsey apprenticeship sharpened it. The credential that resonates with senior audiences, however, is neither. It is a national railway, genuinely transformed. Key speaking topics Large-scale organisational transformation in politically constrained environments Change leadership in state-owned and regulated enterprises Workforce restructuring under political and union constraint Infrastructure governance and European investment strategy Operational crisis leadership Transport and mobility as a strategic policy challenge Board governance across public and private capital Ideal for CEOs and senior executives leading transformation in regulated industries, utilities, or public-sector adjacent organisations Boards and chairs of state-owned enterprises, infrastructure authorities, or large government-funded bodies CHROs and transformation leads navigating workforce restructuring in politically sensitive environments European policy, infrastructure, and public investment forums where governance and commercial strategy intersect Audience outcomes A clearer articulation of how change management in constrained organisations differs from private-sector transformation – and what that difference demands of leadership Concrete case material from the SNCB turnaround: what decisions were made, what levers were available, and what did not work A practical lens on managing multiple simultaneous stakeholder mandates (government, unions, commercial partners, and public) without losing operational momentum Insight into how European investment institutions think about national infrastructure; useful for leaders navigating public funding cycles and cross-border capital decisions Honest reflection on leading an institution through acute public crisis, and the communication and governance choices that followed

Why organisations work with Jacob Morgan His “Vulnerable Leader Equation” offers a specific, research-backed counter-argument to the dominant leadership vulnerability narrative – making the case that vulnerability without competence actively undermines trust, not builds it. Boards and CHROs get a framework they can act on, not a platitude. The research underpinning The Future Leader (140 CEO interviews, 14,000-person LinkedIn survey) gives senior audiences data that reflects their own peer group back at them – a rare source of authority in a crowded leadership development market. His founder role at Future of Work Leaders – a by-invitation CHRO community including members from Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and Lego – means his frameworks are stress-tested against the most senior people leaders in the world, not just conference rooms. The Future Leader won the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021, providing external, peer-validated credibility beyond self-reported authority. Organisations navigating the tension between AI adoption and human leadership capability get a framework that treats the two as interdependent – not competing priorities – grounded in his three-environment model of employee experience (culture, technology, physical workspace). Biography highlights Bestselling author of six books published by Wiley and McGraw-Hill, covering collaboration, the future of work, employee experience, leadership, and vulnerability The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020) – winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021 Research base includes 140+ CEO interviews and a LinkedIn-partnered survey of nearly 14,000 employees for The Future Leader; 100+ CEO interviews and a DDI-partnered survey of 14,000 employees for Leading With Vulnerability Founder of Future of Work Leaders, a by-invitation global CHRO community with members from Johnson & Johnson, Dow, Lego, Northrop Grumman, and Neiman Marcus Contributed to and cited in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, NPR, and CNN Host of Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan; featured guest on the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work podcast Biography Jacob Morgan has spent more than a decade asking a question most organisations avoid: why do capable leaders so consistently fail to produce the organisations they intend? His answer, built across six books and primary research involving hundreds of CEOs and tens of thousands of employees, is both precise and uncomfortable – the model of leadership most executives were trained in was designed for a world that no longer exists. His most cited framework, the Vulnerable Leader Equation, makes a specific argument: vulnerability in isolation is not a leadership quality, it is a liability. The research underpinning Leading With Vulnerability (Wiley, 2024) – drawn from over 100 CEO interviews and a DDI-partnered survey of 14,000 employees – shows that leaders who combine openness about their gaps with clear, competence-driven responses to those gaps outperform peers on trust, engagement, and team performance. It is a direct challenge to the feel-good vulnerability conversation, and it is grounded in data. The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020), winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021, applied the same research discipline to the broader question of what leading through disruption actually requires. Based on interviews with over 140 CEOs at organisations including Unilever, Mastercard, and KPMG – paired with a LinkedIn-partnered survey of nearly 14,000 employees – it identified four specific mindsets and five specific skills that define readiness for leadership in uncertain conditions. Morgan is also the founder of Future of Work Leaders, a by-invitation CHRO community whose members include Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and Lego. His work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management Review. He hosts the Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan podcast and has been a featured guest on the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work series. Key speaking topics Future-ready leadership Vulnerability and trust in organisations Employee experience strategy Leadership in the age of AI Future of work Organisational culture and performance Executive development and people strategy Ideal for CHROs and CPOs navigating the gap between leadership investment and employee outcomes Senior leadership teams preparing for AI-driven workforce transformation Boards and executive committees reviewing leadership capability and succession HR and people functions building future-ready culture frameworks Audience outcomes A named framework – the Vulnerable Leader Equation – for understanding when and how vulnerability strengthens rather than undermines leadership authority The four mindsets and five skills that Morgan’s CEO research identified as defining future-ready leaders, with practical application at individual and team level A clearer model for diagnosing where employee experience is breaking down across culture, technology, and physical environment Research-grounded perspective on how AI is reshaping the leadership role – and what human capability this places at a premium Practical tools for assessing the gap between how leaders perceive their impact and how their people experience it

Why organisations work with Dave Ulrich The four-domain architecture of human capability, talent, leadership, organisation, and the HR function, is Ulrich’s own framework. It gives business and HR leaders a single integrated taxonomy for what is otherwise a sprawl of disconnected people and organisation initiatives, and a structured way to decide which investments will actually move stakeholder outcomes. The Human Resource Competency Study, now in its eighth round across 35 years, has cumulatively drawn on more than 100,000 respondents. Round 7 produced the headline finding that organisational capability has four times the business impact of individual talent. Round 8 sharpens the picture: HR department capability and the organisational capabilities HR helps build have six to eight times the business impact of individual HR competencies. Ulrich brings these findings into the room directly, not via a citation. Ulrich is the originator of the HR Business Partner model that most large organisations still operate today. Engaging him is not external validation of the existing model. It is access to the next-generation architecture, including the Organization Guidance System diagnostic that has now been run inside more than 500 organisations. The Leadership Capital Index reframes leadership quality as a measurable asset that investors and boards can rate the way Moody’s rates credit. For boards under increasing pressure to disclose human capital substance, not narrative, this is one of the few frameworks built explicitly for that conversation. Induction into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, alongside HR Magazine’s «father of modern HR» designation and recognition as the most influential HR thinker of the decade, places him among the small group of figures who have demonstrably shaped a field rather than contributed to one. Biography highlights Rensis Likert Professor Emeritus, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan Co-founder and partner, The RBL Group Author of more than 30 books including Human Resource Champions (Harvard Business School Press, 1997), The Leadership Capital Index (Berrett-Koehler, 2015), Victory Through Organization (McGraw-Hill, 2017), and Reinventing the Organization (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019) Editor, Human Resource Management journal, 1990 to 1999; Distinguished Fellow, National Academy of Human Resources Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, 2017; HR Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award, 2012, source of the «father of modern HR» designation; named most influential HR thinker of the decade by HR Magazine Lead architect of the Human Resource Competency Study (eight rounds, 35-plus years, more than 100,000 cumulative respondents) and the Organization Guidance System diagnostic (more than 500 organisations) Active global platform: more than 400,000 LinkedIn followers and a weekly newsletter with more than 230,000 subscribers, with weekly posts routinely reaching 50,000 to 70,000 views Biography HR is not about HR. The phrase is Ulrich’s own. It captures the through-line of three decades of work: that the HR function exists to deliver value to every stakeholder the organisation touches, not to perfect its own processes. Employees and executives inside. Customers, investors, and communities outside. The discipline he calls human capability is the architecture that connects them. That architecture has four domains, each backed by its own research base. Talent covers how organisations acquire, develop, and retain full contributors, now framed by Ulrich as Talent Advantage = AI × HI, artificial intelligence multiplied by human ingenuity. Organisation treats the company as a set of capabilities: agility, culture, innovation, strategic clarity, collaboration, and customer connection. These can be prioritised through the Organization Guidance System, now deployed in more than 500 companies. Leadership draws on the Leadership Code research with more than 30,000 respondents, and on the Leadership Capital Index, which gives boards and investors a measurable framework for leadership quality. The HR function rests on the 35-year Human Resource Competency Study, with more than 100,000 cumulative respondents, and shapes the operating models, practices, and competencies HR uses today. The practical consequences of this work have shaped how HR is organised. Human Resource Champions (1997) introduced the four-role model, strategic partner, change agent, administrative expert, and employee champion, that became the template for HR business partnering inside Fortune 500 organisations. The Leadership Capital Index (2015) made the case that leadership quality can be rated the way credit is rated. Victory Through Organization (2017) was the empirical headline: organisational capability has roughly four times the business impact of individual talent. Round 8 of the HRCS sharpens that further: the HR department and the organisational capabilities it helps build have six to eight times the business impact of individual HR competencies. Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor Emeritus at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and a partner at The RBL Group. He has worked with more than half of the Fortune 200 across more than 80 countries. He was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2017, and was named «father of modern HR» by HR Magazine in its 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award. His weekly LinkedIn posts reach more than 400,000 followers and 230,000 newsletter subscribers. That audience is how much of the global HR and business community engages with his current work in real time. Key speaking topics Stakeholder value through human capability The four domains of HR: talent, leadership, organisation, and the HR function HR transformation and the next-generation HR Business Partner model Organisational capability as competitive advantage Leadership Capital Index and leadership as a board-level asset The HR inflection point: AI, analytics, and the future of the HR function Culture transformation and organisational design Ideal for CEOs and executive teams looking for a single integrated language across talent, leadership, organisational capability, and the HR function CHROs and senior HR teams whose remit now spans stakeholder outcomes across employees, customers, investors, and communities Boards and investors who need a measurable framework for the human capability behind market value Transformation leads redesigning the HR operating model and the cross-functional accountabilities that sit alongside it across business leaders, HR, and employees Audience outcomes The four-domain human capability framework as a single integrated language for talent, leadership, organisation, and HR investment, replacing the disconnected list of HR programmes most teams are working from The empirical case for why organisational and capability investments outperform individual talent investments, drawn directly from HRCS and OGS findings A diagnostic logic for deciding which human capability investments will move customer share, investor confidence, and community standing, not just employee engagement scores A practical model for measuring leadership quality that can be defended in an investor or board conversation A clear position from which CHROs and CEOs can present HR as a leading indicator of business performance rather than a lagging cost