By the time he was 26 Dominic Colenso had flown a spaceship, lost a million dollars and been fired by Simon Cowell. He now empowers businesses, sales teams and leaders around the world to increase the impact of their communication and perform at their best under pressure. He’s also the host of the Why Life’s A Pitch podcast.
Kim Witten is a communication consultant with a PhD in linguistics, based in Liverpool, UK. She specialises in using language insights to help people decode messy signals and make better sense of their thoughts, behaviours, and interactions.
Her expertise lies in analysing the subtle ways language reflects identity, mindset, and intention — turning overthinking into deep, purposeful reflection.
Kim works with thinkers of all kinds, especially neurodivergent and deep-thinking individuals, helping them clarify what they want, why it matters, and how to get there.
Through over 800 hours of coaching sessions, years of language-focused research, and decades of design and research expertise, Kim has built a practice grounded in the belief that thoughtful, conscious communication is a powerful tool for personal and professional transformation.
From career-changers to change-makers, Kim has supported people from all over the globe to make sense out of messy signals and plan the simplest path to the life and career they truly want.
Lizzie Bentley Bowers is a PCC-level Executive Coach with a Masters in Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology, who has been coaching leaders and teams for over 15 years, challenging them to unearth what is really going on and support them to see what else is possible and work out how to get there. Keen to make the most useful leadership thinking accessible and applicable to all leaders she is the founder of the leadership hub Towards Leadership, author of the Strengths Stacker journals, host of the Leadership Letters podcast and a regular contributor to Coaching Perspectives magazine.
Alison Lucas is a professionally certified (ICF PCC) Executive Coach with two decades of experience working with leaders across all three sectors, and around the globe. Alison’s first career began with 15 years of commercial leadership experience in FMCG and business consultancy. Alison blends her considerable commercial business background with her coaching and systemic experience to equip leaders to navigate change in their complex and uncertain world.
Sasha Frieze FRSA FCIM is an award-winning event strategist, consultant, coach and trainer, who’s delivered 1,000+ events in 30+ years. Sasha has worked for decades with clients across media owners, corporates, associations and non-profits. Her clients include the United Nations Foundation, The Guardian, The BMJ, the Open Data Institute, Abrdn, Raymond James, Times & Sunday Times, Incisive Media, Informa, the British Society for Immunology and the Royal College of Anaesthetists.
Sasha is a Non-Executive Director of the British Society for Haematology, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and The Royal Society of Arts, is a visiting lecturer in event management at The University of Westminster, London and judges industry awards.
Amanda Downs’s aim is to support sales leaders to drive the value they bring to their customers, and the capability of their people to sustain it.
She uses her practical mix of mindset, skillset and toolset for leading edge commercial influence to help sales teams to work better with each other and with their customers.
Amanda has worked with teams in publishing, biscuits, industrial cleaners, banking, desserts, sandwiches, construction, fine art, engineering, fintech, healthcare, beer, bus tickets and baby food.
She provides commercial strategy facilitation, leadership coaching and sales capability training to multinational brands as well as SME business owners and the UK health service.
Amanda’s career started in sales and marketing, where she has held board director positions in the UK and Ireland. She has focused on commercial leadership and and team capability since 2006.
Amanda is Director of Commercial Leadership at The Uspire Group and Founding Director of her private coaching practice, Sales Growth Expert. She hosts the podcast Sales Leader Secrets
Paul Hudson has been working to improve customer focus with brands globally for 25 years. He is CEO of FlexMR, an award-winning customer insight company working with ambitious brands to embed Customer Salience at the heart of organizational decision-making. He is a recognized industry leader, named among the top 250 influential insights leaders, globally, by ESOMAR.
FlexMR host the annual Customer Salience Summit, a leading conference for brand marketers, scoring 92% feedback rating. Due to high demand, they went on to launch a second event, Customer Salience In Practice. The company also hosts a LinkedIn group to enable marketing practitioners to support each other in their pursuit of closing the customer delivery gap.
Paul also hosts the MRX Lab podcast, which has amassed over 100,000 downloads and has remained in the top 10% on the Spotify charts for the past three years. Through FlexMR, Paul sponsors a PhD on Customer Salience at Lancaster University Management School (rated in the top-10 business schools in the UK). He is based in Cumbria, UK.
Anne Archer is an executive coach, coach supervisor, mentor and leadership practitioner who works at the intersection of performance, wellbeing and human connection. For more than two decades, she has helped leaders, coaches and organizations navigate the realities of working under pressure, particularly when stress, uncertainty, change and mental health challenges begin to affect performance, relationships and decision-making.
A former Vice President, consultant and senior manager, Anne has worked internationally throughout her career. Her experience includes leadership and consulting assignments in New York, Moscow and Astana, together with coaching, supervision and leadership development work across the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia, including Saudi Arabia and Singapore. This global perspective has given her a unique insight into the shared human challenges that sit beneath different cultures, industries and leadership environments.
Anne holds Master’s degrees in both Leadership and Management Development and the Psychology of Wellbeing, combining deep academic understanding with extensive practical experience. She is also a Mental Health Advocate and trainer, suicide prevention facilitator and coach supervisor, with a particular interest in the space where coaching, performance and mental wellbeing intersect.
Much of Anne’s work focuses on helping coaches and leaders remain effective when supporting people who are struggling at a threshold or edge. This can be a survival edge, a learning edge or a transformation edge. At each edge pressure impacts capacity, clarity and/or identity. She is passionate about equipping professionals to have conversations that are compassionate, psychologically informed and grounded in clear ethical boundaries, knowing both the power and limits of their role.
Drawing on a career spanning corporate leadership, international consulting, coaching, supervision and wellbeing practice, Anne brings a rare combination of commercial credibility, psychological insight and practical wisdom. Through Working at the Edges, she provides a framework for navigating the conversations no one trains us for, yet many of us find ourselves having every day.
Dr Claire Handby’s career journey spans more than 25 years, beginning in the construction industry where she managed trades on-site — hard hat on, steel-toe capped boots at the ready — before moving into senior leadership roles in Big Four management consulting with EY, Deloitte, and KPMG.
A chartered professional and now successful business owner, she has built a reputation as a trusted board-level adviser and executive coach. Today, she helps individuals realign their careers with clarity and confidence, drawing on her depth of personal experience within conversations.
Melissa Romo is a veteran of global business management, having held executive roles in Warsaw, Paris, London and New York for some of the world’s most recognized companies. Across her three decades in marketing and advertising, she has been recognized as a global advertising and marketing “40 over 40,” “Inspirational Woman of the Year,” and “Inclusive Leader,” and her team’s work has received numerous awards and accolades. She is a regular speaker and mentor at events such as the Digital Marketing World Forum, Generation Success Breaking Barriers and the B2B Marketing Podcast. She is currently VP of Global Customer Marketing for a leading cloud software firm.
Melissa has built and managed high-performing teams around the world in office-based, hybrid and fully remote settings. She is the author of “Your Resource Is Human” (2023), a practical guide to empathetic leadership for building culture and connections in the remote and hybrid workplace. Melissa’s book has been lauded by workplace and leadership experts as “the book 21st century leaders and followers have been pining for.”
Melissa holds an M.B.A. from the Yale School of Management, where she studied organizational behavior and leadership. She also holds a B.A. in History from the University of Virginia and earned a Post-Graduate Certificate in Business Sustainability Management from the University of Cambridge. Her clients and employers have included American Express, Grey Advertising, SAPConcur, Sage, and Procter & Gamble. More about her hybrid leadership talks and workshops for companies at https://www.melissaromoauthor.com/
Author location: Hoboken, NJ, 07030