AFTER suffering bullying throughout his school years, Joe Plumb set up a charity to help others going through similar at the tender age of 13.

A decade on and Joe has dedicated his life to raising awareness of mental health issues and during lockdown helped those in need through his social media pages.

I was always different. I was diagnosed with autism at seven and that was enough to make me stand out. I didn't have any friends, teachers didn't know how to deal with me.

At school I was physically and verbally abused, I was spat at. Aged 13, I launched a campaign called Stand Out, Seek Help and very quickly it went global. I went from being this kid that everyone hated to someone people were listening to.

Joe's mental health deteriorated through his teenage years leading to various diagnoses including bipolar disorder and mixed personality disorder. He self-harmed and made several attempts to take his own life.

Aged 16 he was admitted to a psychiatric unit and later was taken into care.

At the age of 13 Joe set up the 'Speak Up, Speak Out’ campaign with support from James Arthur, Sinitta Malone and Richard Branson, the campaign went global.

Joe campaigned to change mental health services and implement better ways to help children and young people stand up and speak out against bullying.

Joe in partnership with the Home Office, developed a supportive disclosure toolkit to help those with Autism and other additional learning needs, better communicate what was going on if they were experiencing bullying.

Joe was a part of ITV’s 'Britain Get Talking’ campaign and has appeared on TV, radio, Reality shows and adverts.

Joe Is an ambassador for Kidscape and Ditch the label and runs his own charity ’Stand Out Northants’ for looked after children and care leavers. This is the first charity of it’s kind ever in Europe. Joe is also going to be a director of Kidscape very soon and he is also a co-founder and partner for the ‘Music in every school’ organisation in the United States.

AWARDS:

- Voice for Young People ​ - Youth Voice Award ​ - Princess Diana Award ​ - Most Inspiring Young Person of the Year - Champion For Young People ​ - Finalist for 'The Sun' Mental Health Hero Award 2021

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Dr. Neil Hawkes D.Phil (Oxford), MEd, BA, FRSA is well known as an inspirational speaker, educator, broadcaster, author and social commentator. He is a popular TEDx presenter.

Neil’s thinking is having a profound influence on education and more widely in society. Neil first gained international recognition when he was a Headteacher in Oxfordshire, UK. Here he worked with a school community to devise and implement a pedagogical system that would give pupils a transformational vocabulary, based on values such as respect, tolerance, humility and justice. The school community found that pupils were empowered to be self-leaders, with an active ethical compass that affected behaviour, their thinking and the quality of their schoolwork. Today Neil’s philosophy has spread into all aspects of society and is known as Values-based Living. He is one of the V20 Task Group that is advising G20 leaders about the importance of values to humanity. He is also an Ambassador for the Foundation for Education Development (FED)

Neil founded The International Values based Trust, https://ivetfoundation.com and its educational arm Values-based Education, https://www.valuesbasededucation.com

His bestselling book, From My Heart, transforming lives through values, celebrates the success of VbE worldwide. Neil’s latest book co-authored with Jane Hawkes, is called The Inner Curriculum, how to nurture wellbeing, resilience and self-leadership. More information about Dr Hawkes can be found at http://neilhawkes.org

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Motivational speaker and podcaster Jaz O'Hara is the founder of The Worldwide Tribe, an organisation and online community supporting refugees and asylum seekers globally.

The Worldwide Tribe was born from a life-changing Facebook post Jaz wrote about her first trip to the Calais Jungle in July 2015. Jaz’s authentic account went viral, raising £250,000, reaching over 13 million people and sparking the collection of physical donations by the tonne - filling warehouses across the country.

Jaz has worked tirelessly in refugee camps across Europe and the Middle East ever since, telling the stories that too often go unheard.

As a writer for The Huffington Post, winner of Marie Claire’s ‘Future Shaper’ award and member of Amnesty International’s ‘Collective’, Jaz has become a leading voice on the topic of migration, speaking everywhere from TedX, to the United Nations in NYC.

Jaz’s work comes from a personal place, and dates back to early 2015 when her parents began fostering an unaccompanied minor named Mez from Eritrea. Mez made the journey across the world as a child refugee, and was the first of four new brothers to join Jaz’s family, also from Afghanistan, Sudan and most recently, a 13-year-old boy from Libya.

The Worldwide Tribe is the continuation of this global family.

Jaz and her team are dedicated to challenging the fear-based narrative of today's media and society and do so through film, talks and an extremely popular podcast. Jaz’s natural gift for storytelling has powered many projects on the ground including installing WiFi in camps in France and Greece, running art projects in Za'atari camp in Jordan, supporting a Search-and-Rescue in the Mediterranean and many more.

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Claude Silver is VaynerMedia’s first ever Global Chief Heart Officer, tasked with fusing empathy with agency to unlock employee potential and foster a culture of belonging across the 1,600+ person organization. Between her deep education in psychology and spirituality, and the two decades she has spent as an advertising strategist, Claude has been studying and influencing human behavior for over three decades.

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Transformation delivered through Cultural Performance

Experienced customer facing leader with a track record of delivery. Strong transformational and operational leadership gained at FTSE 100 and NASDAQ organisations, business outcomes, with a passion for the development of management teams and colleague engagement. Developing and leading multi-site, global teams, directly and virtually via outsource and offshore models. Experience managing large operational teams in excess of +2000 colleagues in growth, M&A and cash constrained environments.

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Claire Yorke is an author, academic researcher, and advisor. Her expertise is in the role of empathy and emotions in international affairs, politics, leadership, and society.  She is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Centre for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, leading a new project funded by the European Commission on Empathy and International Security (EIS). Between 2018 and 2020, she was a Henry A. Kissinger Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at International Security Studies and the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, Yale University.

She is currently writing two books on empathy and emotions. The first focuses on their integral role in diplomacy, combining theory and practice with extensive interviews (Brookings Institution and Chatham House). Her second book examines how empathy and emotions are critical to effective political leadership (Yale University Press). Alongside Professor Jack Spence and Dr Alastair Masser, she has co-edited two volumes on diplomacy which are were published in April 2021 (IB Tauris and Bloomsbury).

Claire received her PhD in International Relations from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, receiving an Elsevier Award for outstanding scholarship. She has a Masters in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter, and a BA in Politics, International Relations and French from Lancaster University, during which she spent a year studying at Sciences Po, in Lille, France.

Her work combines academic research with applied policy relevance and Claire has a long history in the policy world, ensuring research informs practice, and practice informs research. She began her career in 2006 working in the House of Commons for a frontbench Member of Parliament on the defence portfolio. In 2009, she joined Chatham House, where she managed the International Security Research Department for four years. In this role, she led projects and conducted research on a broad range of topics from national security and defence strategy, cyber security, terrorism, human security, and drugs and organized crime. In 2014, she was a member of the NATO and Atlantic Council Young Leaders Working Group, reporting to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on the future of the transatlantic alliance. Translating her research for policy-makers, she has designed a professional course for mid-level managers on ‘Empathy and Emotions in Policy-Making’, which is taught online via the King’s Institute for Government.

Claire has over seven years’ experience teaching in the US and UK. In 2020, she designed and led a Masters’ course on ‘Emotions and Foreign Policy’ at the Jackson Institute, Yale University. She has taught courses on international relations, statecraft, diplomacy and global politics at undergraduate and postgraduate level in the Department of War Studies and Department of Political Economy at King’s College London.

She is on the Advisory Committee for Women in International Security UK (WIIS-UK), the Board of Advisors for Promote Leadership, and the Research Advisory Council of the Resolve Network.

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Sam Smith remains the only female Chief Executive of a City broking firm.  She established her firm, finnCap, in 2007 having orchestrated the buy-out of a small broking subsidiary of a private client stockbroking firm - today finnCap is ranked No1 Nominated Adviser and Broker to AIM companies.

Sam qualified as a Chartered Accountant at KPMG and is a University of Bristol alumni.

Sam is passionate about ensuring that girls and women see only opportunities rather than barriers to success in whatever industry they want to be in.

Outside her duties as the CEO, Sam is actively involved in various mentoring projects and organizations such as Pinky Lilani’s “Women of the Future” awards, of which Sam is a former winner.

Sam is also a patron for the Modern Muse project, aimed at millions of young girls throughout the UK to encourage and inspire them to look at business careers and entrepreneurship as a way to achieve their dreams.

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Our first ever double-guest episode!

John Lodge is an NHS manager and CEO of the multi-award winning timebank and skill exchange Hexitime, which he co-founded with Hesham Abdalla in 2018. He has a focus and passion for improving healthcare services and supporting people to do so.

Hesham is a consultant paediatrician and director of medical education and quality improvement. He has over 10 years experience of service improvement seen through the twin lenses of patient and staff experience and has led teams to a number of Patient Experience National Network and HSJ awards.

He teaches extensively on leadership and QI and was a senior lecturer at Birmingham and subsequently Keele University, teaching on the NHS Leadership Academy Elizabeth Garrett Anderson programme for senior leaders. He was also a trustee of Doctors Worldwide, a charity delivering quality medical care and relief in over 22 countries across the globe.

Hesham co-founded Hexitime, the first timebanking platform for improvement of Health and Care, which has been nominated for a number of regional and national awards.

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Ben Bengougam is Senior Vice President, Human Resources, EMEA, Hilton. Based in the UK, he is responsible for leading the Human Resources function across the region, which includes nearly 60,000 team members in 69 countries & territories. He joined the company in 2010 with a European remit, and following this had his responsibilities widened to include Middle East and Africa.

Ben and his team have successfully developed and executed a series of award-winning people strategies to address challenges including talent acquisition and team member engagement and retention, as well as launching innovative and skills development and employability programmes for young people. Under his stewardship, Hilton has also gained consistent recognition from Great Places to Work, in which Hilton ranks among the top 10 in 12 countries across EMEA, including #1 rankings in the UK Italy and Turkey.

A passionate developer of talent, Ben and his team launched Careers@Hilton, a global initiative designed to engage and inspire a new generation of hospitality professionals. He is also responsible for implementing new initiatives to encourage the development of diverse talent across the business, including Coaching on Call, a leadership coaching service aimed specifically at female Team Members in the early years of their career. More recently he has been instrumental is setting up the EMEA Diversity Council with representation from Hilton's Team Member Resources Groups including Ethnic, Pride, Women, Abilities and Generations leaders.

Ben is a BSc engineering science graduate and has also obtained a Master’s Degree in HR Development. He is a fellow of the Institute of Hospitality and a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD. With more than 30 years’ experience in human resources, Ben has worked in a range of high-profile positions, including HR Director at leading Middle Eastern franchise operator MH Alshaya.

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Ian Feaver is Managing Director of Arteel Ltd and is spreading the power of appreciation around the UK. ARTEEL have over 40 years experience at creating great work place cultures throughout Belgium and other parts of Europe. Now, more than ever before, employees need to feel connected to the vision, mission and values of their company. Due to the significant success of ARTEEL in Belgium, Ian wanted to introduce this amazing business to the UK and thus established the company here in 2020. ARTEEL UK Ltd, provide amazing 'Employee Experiences' throughout the UK with their peer to peer recognition platform and create optimum employee engagement.

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