SPEAKERS

Ad Davies

Head of Talent Development at Gymshark and a leader in talent development, culture & performance. 

A coach and leader in talent development, internal communications, and culture and performance, Adam combines his experience in elite sport and a rapidly growing commercial business to bring the human to leadership.

First and foremost, he believes in putting people at the forefront of an organisation and engaging them with “a collective reason to graft” in order to elicit true performance.

Ben Hunt-Davis

Ben Hunt Davis is a renowned keynote speaker, Olympic Gold medallist and performance coach. With 20+ years of experience, Ben specialises in leadership and team development.

Ben is a best-selling co-author of the book ‘Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?’ and Olympic Gold medallist from the Sydney Olympics.

Ben tells the story of the last 24 months leading up to the Sydney Olympics and how the Great Britain Men’s Eights changed as a crew from being a regularly 7th placed boat to a winning one. The story is one of a group of individuals forged into a winning team by following a set of Performance Principles, habitually and consistently, in everything they did. 

The Great Britain Men’s Eights’ collective focus, direction and drive to succeed was captured in the execution of the clear and direct question – ‘Will it make the boat go faster?’.

Chris Packham

Chris Packham ha gained recognition as a naturalist, television presenter, writer, photographer, conservationist, campaigner and filmmaker.

Chris presents the BBC’s BAFTA award-winning series Springwatch and Winterwatch for which he is perhaps best known. He recently presented the multi award-winning series Inside our Autistic Minds for BBC Two and Channel 4’s Time to Break the Law.

A leading campaigner, Chris has always been active and vocal about wildlife and conservation issues and injustice. In September 2019 Chris organised the UK’s first march for wildlife – The People’s Walk for Wildlife, London.

Chris has received numerous awards including Conservation Hero of the Year at the Birders’ Choice Awards and was named Britain’s second most influential conservation heroes in The Wildlife Power List featured in BBC Wildlife magazine. Chris was appointed a CBE in the 2019 New Year’s honours list for services to wildlife and nature conservation.

Darren Coxon

Darren Coxon is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Kompass Education, a consultancy specialising in providing schools and colleges the training, support and tools they need to innovate safely and ethically with AI.

An educator for 26 years, Darren has worked in every sector in almost every role, including teacher, Head of Department (mainstream and SEND), Head of Teaching and Learning, Principal (UK and international), Director of Education, and Chief Operating Officer.

Darren now runs Kompass, a new company whose focus in both AI literacy and AI governance, ensuring schools are fully compliant with recent UK government announcements on AI in education, and (for EU Schools) with the EU AI Act.

He is currently working on a pilot project with SEND schools across the UK, helping them to integrate AI in impactful ways.

Naomi Sesay

Head of Creative Equity at Channel 4, International Public Speaker, Broadcast TV Producer/Director, Entrepreneur

Using over 25 years’ experience in television and media, Naomi Sesay has devoted her career to serving as a powerful advocate for diversity and inclusion, becoming a trail-blazer for social enterprise. She is currently Head of Creative Equity at Channel 4, and was previously a senior trainer for FTSE 100 Companies.

As a Diversity & Inclusion expert, Naomi has delivered training for an array of organisations including Google, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Harvard and WPP. Naomi is also leading the build for the very first female-centric, bio designed, sustainable smart city in Sierra Leone.

An inspiring and thought-provoking speaker, Naomi challenges audiences to examine their emotional, cultural and neurological habits with the aim to create a truly diverse workforce.

Nicky Perfect

International hostage and crisis negotiator turned world renowned trainer, speaker and author, Nicky’s career includes 31 years spent as a Metropolitan police officer, the last 10 of which were spent working for the elite New Scotland Yard Hostage and Crisis Negotiation Unit as an international hostage and crisis negotiator.

Author of the best-selling book “Crisis – true stories from my life as a hostage negotiator” and recipient of a British Empire Medal for “meritorious service to the community during the pandemic”, Nicky has travelled the world teaching negotiation.

She was also the first woman to become the Director of UK Training for the National Hostage and Crisis Negotiation Course, a role which required her to design and train UK police officers to deal with life and death situations from suicide intervention to kidnaps.

Nicky’s mission is to share the lessons she learnt as a negotiator to help others improve their communication and negotiation skills, and ultimately their relationships with one another.