July 2026 Speaker News
This is our July 2026 speaker news this month featuring feedback on Anthony Bennett, Alex Wood, Clarke Carlisle, Michael McGrath and Simon Calder; we welcome Ryan Llewellyn-Pace and Damian Hughes to the website; and have updates from Chris Lovett, Dan Edwards and Anj Handa.
SPEAKER FEEDBACK
“We’ve just finished the session with Alex, he was absolutely delightful. All the knowledge shared with us was highly valued, therefore we thank both of you for all support provided.” – On Alex Wood – May 2026 (pictured)
“It was a wonderful day, and the students were fascinated with Anthony’s story! We have had exceptionally good feedback from students and staff alike.” On Anthony Bennett – May 2026
“They were both so incredibly engaging, professional and their messaging was spot on. Their keynotes both received standing ovations. They were both fabulous!” – On Clarke Carlisle (pictured) and Michael McGrath MBE – May 2026
“Simon is an absolute gentleman. His after-dinner talk was informative, interesting and very entertaining. He was extremely popular with our audience and even got stuck in serving drinks! – a complete star.” On Simon Calder – May 2026
NEW SPEAKERS
We are delighted to welcome Damian Hughes and Ryan Llewellyn-Pace to the website –
Damian Hughes is a bestselling author who combines his practical and academic background within sport, organisational development and change psychology, to help organisations and teams to create a high performing culture.
He is the author of eight best-selling business books, including Liquid Thinking, Liquid Leadership, How to Change Absolutely Anything, How to Think Like Sir Alex Ferguson and The Five STEPS to a Winning Mindset.
His latest books, High Performance: Lessons from the Best on Becoming Your Best and How to Change Your Life, have both been number one Sunday Times best sellers. His work has been translated into twelve languages.
He has also been nominated for the 2007 William Hill Sports book of the year award for Peerless, his biography of boxing great Sugar Ray Robinson. He co-authored a critically acclaimed biography of boxing legend, Thomas Hearns and in 2013, his book, Marvelous Marvin Hagler became the UK’s best-selling sports biography.
Ryan Llewellyn-Pace is an accomplished entrepreneur, speaker, business leader, author, and global brand strategist, renowned for transforming iconic fashion and lifestyle businesses and scaling them to international success.
He is the Founder & CEO of Pace Partnership London, advising some of the world’s leading brands on strategy, international growth, and retail innovation, and the former Managing Director of Barbour, where he led DTC, wholesale, and global distributor teams while driving record-breaking growth and international expansion.
Ryan was formerly the Sales Director at Canterbury of New Zealand where he was a key member of the leadership team that revitalised the business and re-established Canterbury as a leading global rugby clothing brand
He was instrumental in steering the company out of administration, restoring market confidence and commercial stability and rebuilt and strengthened internal teams and external partner relationships, driving sustainable growth across the UK, Europe, and North America
SPEAKER UPDATES
For over 20 years, Anj Handa has worked at the intersection of equality, leadership and structural change: as a professional lobbyist, governance specialist, consultant, community builder and speaker. Her work is grounded in a single, unfashionable conviction: that women’s inequality is not a pipeline problem or a cultural inconvenience. It is a structural failure, reproduced through the design of organisations, boards and institutions that were not built with women in mind, and have not been adequately redesigned since. Anj has recently written a piece about Authoritarianism on her substack
Dan Edwards worked in education for many years and has held leadership roles in both the secondary and primary sectors, most recently holding the role of Principal at a large inner city primary school until moving into Executive school leadership. Dan has a new speech on the COST OF CARRYING EVERYTHING
The Cost of Carrying Everything
A conversation about leadership, pressure, identity and sustainable performance. Built around five questions:
- What are you carrying?
- What are you trying to control?
- What are you concealing?
- Who are you connected to?
- What needs to change if you’re going to continue sustainably?
This isn’t a talk about avoiding hard work. It’s about recognising when responsibility becomes unsustainable and what leaders can do before burnout takes hold.
Chris Lovett is an executive coach, TEDx speaker, and 2x best-selling author of Discovery of Less (2021) and Relentless: The Power of Doing Less in a Workplace that Demands More (De Gruyter 2026).
His books and TEDx talk position Chris as the emerging straight talker in time management and sustainable high performance for the ‘do more with less’ era. He has sent us over a new biog and speaking topics too.
That is, it for this month. As always if you have any questions or enquiries, please contact us on enquiries@scampspeakers.co.uk