BigSpeak® Speakers Bureau: Motivational Speakers | Keynote Speakers | Business Speakers

+ Advanced Search

Dr. James Hewitt

PhD Performance Scientist, F1 and Fortune 500 Proven Expert in Performing Under Pressure Without Burnout

A former racing cyclist turned PhD performance scientist, James has spent two decades studying what separates people who thrive under pressure from those who struggle. That path took him to Formula 1, where, as Chief Innovation Officer for the coaching company behind 19 F1 World Championships, he developed methods to support clarity and execution when time is tight and stakes are high. Today, James brings those tools to equip leaders and teams to tackle business pressures; always-on work, rapid change, and relentless demands, working with Fortune 500 teams through his consultancy, the Knowledge Work Lab. His understanding of pressure is also personal: after fighting back from cancer, he learned firsthand what high-stakes moments do to mind and body. James has spoken on stages in 35+ countries, including the World Economic Forum and the Global Leadership Summit. His keynotes blend sharp science, humor, behind-the-scenes stories and practical tools, so audiences leave with a playbook, not just a pep talk.

  • Dr. James Hewitt Keynote Speaker Fee Fee range is for U.S. events, depending on location and organization type

    $10,001 - $20,000

  • Languages Spoken

    English

  • Travels From

    United Kingdom (UK) Illinois, USA

  • Dr. James Hewitt Keynote Speaker Fee Fee range is for U.S. events, depending on location and organization type

    $10,001 - $20,000

  • Languages Spoken

    English

  • Travels From

    United Kingdom (UK) Illinois, USA

Why Dr. James Hewitt?

  • Dr. James Hewitt brings the pressure-performance science behind 19 Formula One World Championships directly to your team
  • Your audience will leave with a practical pressure playbook, not just inspiration that fades by Monday
  • James features optional live brain-imaging demos that make the neuroscience of
    focus and burnout visible in real time on stage

Keynote Speaker Topics

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) Keynote Speakers
  • Business Speakers
  • Communication Keynote Speakers
  • Consulting Keynote Speakers
  • Corporate Culture Keynote Speakers
  • Focus, Productivity & Organization Keynote Speakers
  • Future Trends Keynote Speakers
  • Health and Wellness Keynote Speakers
  • Innovation Keynote Speakers
  • Leadership Keynote Speakers
  • Peak Performance Keynote Speakers
  • Productivity Keynote Speakers
  • Race Car Driver Keynote Speakers
  • Technology Keynote Speakers

Suggested Keynote Speaker Programs

BUILT FOR BREAKTHROUGH: PERFORM AT YOUR BEST, WITHOUT BURNING OUT

Pressure isn’t the problem. How you respond to it is. You know the feeling. The deal is on the line, the room is watching, the decision can’t wait, and suddenly your thinking narrows, your composure slips, or the team starts pulling in different directions. It&#...

Pressure isn’t the problem. How you respond to it is. You know the feeling. The deal is on the line, the room is watching, the decision can’t wait, and suddenly your thinking narrows, your composure slips, or the team starts pulling in different directions. It’s not a talent problem. It’s what happens when pressure changes how people think and communicate, and most of us were never trained for that moment. But when people improve their ability to manage their stress response, performance under pressure can improve by up to 50%. This keynote shows leaders and teams how to recognize what’s happening under pressure and respond with clarity instead of reactivity, using a simple framework and practical reset tools that keep focus sharp, decisions sound, and execution steady when the stakes are highest.

Who Is This For:
Designed specifically to equip leaders and high-performing teams to execute under pressure at:

  • Sales Kick-Offs
  • Annual Meetings
  • Leadership Summits
  • High-Performer Recognition Events
  • Association Conferences

Key Takeaways:

  • Clearer Decisions Under Pressure: Learn how pressure distorts attention and judgment, and how to regain clarity fast, so you make better calls when the stakes are highest.
  • A Repeatable Framework (Not Heroic Performance): Walk away with the 5B Pressure Map and practical reset tools to recognize what’s happening under load and respond consistently in real time.
  • High Performance Without Burnout: A shared language and 60-second reset/recovery tools that raise performance and protect people, so urgency doesn’t become exhaustion.
  • Shared Team Language for Pressure Moments: Give your team a common vocabulary for what’s happening under pressure, so they communicate better when it matters most.
  • Optional Live Brain-Monitoring Demo: See what pressure actually does to performance in real time, making the science visible, memorable, and actionable.

Learn More

THE PIT STOP PRINCIPLE: FOR TEAMS WHO NEED TO WORK TOGETHER UNDER PRESSURE, NOT RETREAT TO THEIR CORNERS

Silos aren’t a structure problem, they’re a trust problem that shows up when pressure hits. You know the feeling. An issue escalates, multiple departments need to move fast, and suddenly everyone’s protecting their own patch instead of solving the problem ...

Silos aren’t a structure problem, they’re a trust problem that shows up when pressure hits. You know the feeling. An issue escalates, multiple departments need to move fast, and suddenly everyone’s protecting their own patch instead of solving the problem together. Here’s what the research tells us: when stress rises, humans instinctively protect what’s theirs. Departments stop sharing information. Handoffs get defensive. People cover their own risk instead of solving the member’s problem. That’s not a character flaw, that’s biology, and it’s predictable. But when teams sync up, they communicate better, solve problems faster, and perform under pressure. Formula 1 pit crews prove it: 1.80 seconds, four tires changed, twenty people moving as one. This keynote gives leaders and teams the tools to override that default, building the kind of trust that actually strengthens under pressure instead of cracking.

Who Is This For:
Designed specifically to align cross-functional teams and build trust under pressure at:

  • Team Off-Sites and Away Days
  • Annual Meetings
  • Sales Kick-Offs
  • Post-Merger or Restructuring Events
  • Leadership Summits

Key Takeaways:

  • Shared Mental Models That Eliminate Guesswork: When everyone understands how the whole system works, not just their piece, handoffs get faster and errors drop. Your team learns to build that shared picture deliberately.
  • Trust That Survives Pressure: Research shows psychological safety predicts team performance better than individual talent. Your team gets practical tools to keep communication open when stakes are high, so pressure bonds you instead of breaking you apart.
  • A Shared Language for Pressure Moments: The 5B Pressure Map and PREPARE → EXECUTE → RESET give everyone the same vocabulary for navigating high-pressure moments, so coordination becomes a system, not a lucky accident.
  • Break the Silo Reflex Before It Starts: Learn why stress triggers territorial behaviour — and how to override that default with simple protocols that keep information flowing across teams when it matters most.
  • From Individual Performers to Synchronised Teams: Discover what F1 pit crews, surgical teams, and elite military units know about moving as one — and how to apply those principles to your team’s highest-pressure moments.

Learn More

PEAK PERFORMANCE IN THE AGE OF DISTRACTION: THINK CLEARLY WHEN EVERYTHING IS COMPETING FOR YOUR ATTENTION

We don’t have a time problem. We have an attention problem. If you’ve ever finished a full day and thought, “I was busy the whole time… so why do I feel like nothing important moved?” you’re not alone. Modern work pulls our focus into tiny pieces: messages, ...

We don’t have a time problem. We have an attention problem. If you’ve ever finished a full day and thought, “I was busy the whole time… so why do I feel like nothing important moved?” you’re not alone. Modern work pulls our focus into tiny pieces: messages, meetings, quick replies, constant context-switching. And when attention breaks, decisions get worse, patience gets shorter, and the work you actually care about keeps sliding to tomorrow. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Redesigning knowledge work to facilitate focus could be worth US$468 billion each year. This keynote shows leaders and teams how to protect the focus that drives their best work, using simple habits and team norms that make deep thinking possible again, so decisions sharpen, priorities stick, and the work that matters actually gets finished.

Who Is This For:
Designed specifically to help leaders and teams reclaim focus and deep work at:

  • Annual Meetings
  • Leadership Conferences
  • Professional Development Days
  • Company-Wide Retreats
  • Association Conferences

Key Takeaways:

  • Cut Digital Debt and False Urgency: Reduce email-driven overwhelm, trim unnecessary meetings with simple team norms, and use AI where it genuinely saves time, freeing up hundreds of hours a year.
  • Reclaim Deep Work: Identify your best focus windows, protect sustained attention, and make meaningful progress on high-priority work, not just more activity.
  • Re-Energise With Smarter Breaks and Better Recovery: Practical daytime breaks and sleep habits that improve cognitive performance, so teams feel sharper, not just busier, and have energy left at the end of the day.
  • Redesign How Your Team Works: Move beyond individual productivity hacks to team-level norms that protect everyone’s focus and make deep thinking possible again.
  • A Simple Takeaway Sheet: Every attendee leaves with a practical one-page guide to embed what they learn immediately.

Learn More

TRANSCEND THE LEADERSHIP PARADOX: SUSTAIN HIGH PERFORMANCE, WITHOUT BURNING YOURSELF OUT IN THE PROCESS

The demands of leadership are eroding the very capabilities leaders need most. Here’s the paradox no one talks about: the higher you rise, the more your calendar fills with other people’s priorities, and the less time you have for the thinking that made you ...

The demands of leadership are eroding the very capabilities leaders need most. Here’s the paradox no one talks about: the higher you rise, the more your calendar fills with other people’s priorities, and the less time you have for the thinking that made you valuable in the first place. You’re expected to be strategic, but you’re buried in the operational. Inspirational, but running on empty. Present for your team, but stretched so thin you’re not fully present anywhere. And the worst part? When leaders struggle, everything downstream struggles with them. By contrast, leaders who recover effectively are rated as more inspirational, which could increase employee productivity by 225%. This keynote shows leaders how to protect their most valuable capabilities under pressure, not by working harder, but by leading smarter, recovering better, and building habits that sustain performance over the long haul. Because your team can only be as resilient as you are.

Who Is This For:
Designed specifically to sustain and protect senior leaders and their teams at:

  • Leadership Conferences
  • Executive Retreats
  • C-Suite Off-Sites
  • Professional Development Days
  • Partner and Managing Director Meetings

Key Takeaways:

  • A Framework for Leading Under Pressure Without Losing Yourself: Practical methods for maintaining performance, fostering psychological safety, and inspiring your team, even when demands keep rising.
  • Time and Headspace for the Thinking That Matters: Techniques to carve out capacity for strategic work and innovation, despite a relentless flow of immediate tasks, so you’re leading, not just reacting.
  • Spot Where Your Energy Is Leaking: Identify the specific habits, patterns, and commitments that are quietly draining your capacity, and practical ways to reclaim it.
  • Model the Leadership You Want to See: Understand how your pace and habits set the tone for your team, and how to lead sustainably without feeling like you’re falling behind.
  • Sustainable Performance That Actually Works: Actionable tools for balancing leadership demands with personal recovery, so you perform at your best without quietly burning out.

Learn More

THE FUTURE OF PERFORMANCE IN THE AGE OF AI: NAVIGATE AI TRANSFORMATION, WITHOUT LOSING WHAT MAKES YOUR PEOPLE VALUABLE

The question isn’t whether AI will transform your work. It’s whether you’ll use it to amplify human potential, or accidentally erode it. Your team is caught in a strange tension. Half of them worry AI will make them irrelevant. The other half would happily ...

The question isn’t whether AI will transform your work. It’s whether you’ll use it to amplify human potential, or accidentally erode it. Your team is caught in a strange tension. Half of them worry AI will make them irrelevant. The other half would happily hand over as much work as possible. Meanwhile, you’re under pressure to adopt fast, show ROI, and not break anything important in the process. But here’s what gets lost in the rush: AI can analyse, predict, and recommend, but it can’t step into the room when tensions rise, make the call when information is incomplete, or hold the team steady when everything is uncertain. The more AI handles the routine, the more human value concentrates in exactly those moments. Leveraging AI tools could improve employees’ productivity by 66% and reduce stress. This keynote shows leaders how to build AI-human partnerships that make both the technology and the people more effective, protecting and strengthening the capabilities AI can’t replace: judgment, creativity, connection, and performance under pressure.

Who Is This For:
Designed specifically to help leaders navigate AI transformation while protecting human performance at:

  • Annual Meetings
  • Leadership Summits
  • Digital Transformation Events
  • Innovation Conferences
  • Future of Work Forums

Key Takeaways:

  • A Clear-Eyed Vision for AI-Human Collaboration: Move beyond fear and hype to a practical understanding of how AI can enhance, not replace, your team’s most valuable capabilities.
  • Know Where to Automate, Augment, and Protect: Discover how to free your people for more complex, creative, and strategic work, without accidentally deskilling them in the process.
  • Lead Through Technological Uncertainty: Build a culture that embraces AI as a partner while staying grounded in what makes your people irreplaceable: judgment, creativity, connection, and performance under pressure.
  • Protect Human Edge as AI Advances: The more AI handles the routine, the more human value concentrates in high-stakes moments. Learn to strengthen those capabilities, not let them atrophy.
  • Practical Integration Framework: A step-by-step approach to AI adoption that keeps humans in the loop where it matters most, grounded in performance science, not just technology trends.

Learn More

THE REGENERATIVE WORKPLACE: FOR LEADERS WHO WANT THEIR PEOPLE TO PERFORM AT THEIR BEST, SUSTAINABLY

Organisations spend $60 billion a year on wellbeing initiatives. The results are inconclusive at best. It’s time for a new model. You’ve probably seen it: the meditation app nobody uses, the wellness webinar that felt like one more thing to attend, the resilience ...

Organisations spend $60 billion a year on wellbeing initiatives. The results are inconclusive at best. It’s time for a new model. You’ve probably seen it: the meditation app nobody uses, the wellness webinar that felt like one more thing to attend, the resilience training that landed while everyone was already exhausted. Traditional approaches treat wellbeing as a perk, something separate from real work, bolted on at the edges. But your people don’t need more programmes. They need an environment where performing well and feeling well aren’t in competition. Where the work itself builds capacity instead of just depleting it. This keynote introduces a different approach: regenerative performance, where wellbeing and high performance reinforce each other instead of trading off. Leaders learn how to create the conditions where people don’t just bounce back from pressure, but grow stronger through it. The result isn’t wellness theatre. It’s a genuine competitive advantage. The results speak for themselves. Companies with high well-being outperform the S&P 500 by 20 percentage points.

Who Is This For:
Designed specifically to help leaders build environments where performance and wellbeing reinforce each other at:

  • HR and People Leadership Conferences
  • Annual Meetings
  • Leadership Retreats
  • Wellbeing and Culture Summits
  • Association Conferences

Key Takeaways:

  • A New Model That Actually Works: Move beyond ineffective wellbeing initiatives to a regenerative approach where people don’t just survive the demands of work, they get stronger through them.
  • Clarity on Where to Focus for Maximum Impact: Identify the specific areas where your organisation can have the greatest effect on energy, engagement, and sustained performance, so you invest in what matters, not what sounds good.
  • End the Tension Between Results and People: Discover how to drive performance and support wellbeing simultaneously, not as a trade-off, but as a genuine competitive advantage.
  • Permission to Stop What Isn’t Working: Cut the wellness theatre. Learn which initiatives actually move the needle, and which to drop without guilt.
  • Practical Strategies Leaders Can Use Immediately: Equip your leaders to build teams that proactively improve health, wellbeing, and performance; a shared language that connects individual thriving to business results.

Learn More

About Keynote Speaker Dr. James Hewitt

When Fortune 500 leaders and F1 teams face pressure: big decisions, tight deadlines, competing demands, many find they haven’t been trained for that moment. Dr. James Hewitt equips them to perform when the stakes are highest, without burning out in the process.

James developed his methods as Chief Innovation Officer for the coaching company behind 19 Formula 1 World Championships, where teams have seconds to make calls that win or lose everything. He continues to work with F1 teams and elite performers today; his insights come from the cutting edge, not the archive.

James holds a PhD in Human Performance Science from Loughborough University (ranked #1 in the world for Sport, Exercise, and Health Science) and is the bestselling author of Regenerative Performance, introducing a framework now used by global organisations and elite teams worldwide.

James has delivered keynotes in 35+ countries to audiences of 8,000+, including three World Economic Forum Annual Meetings in Davos, the Nordic Business Forum (alongside Barack Obama), and the Global Leadership Summit.

His sessions blend sharp science, stories, and humour, often featuring live brain-monitoring demonstrations that show audiences what pressure actually does to performance in real time. Audiences don’t just feel motivated. They leave equipped.

James’s obsession with performance began with a question: what separates people who perform at their best in high-stakes moments from those who struggle? He’s chased the answer for two decades, first as a full-time racing cyclist (not the most talented, but relentlessly curious), then through a PhD studying how elite performers think and execute.

Questions? Contact Us Any Time:

805.965.1400

He brings those tools to Fortune 500 firms and businesses across consulting, finance, tech, pharma, automotive, and aerospace, including PwC, McKinsey, BCG, HSBC, UBS, and Mercedes-Benz. He’s booked for annual meetings, leadership summits, sales kick-offs, and executive retreats: events where substance matters as much as energy.

And James’s understanding of pressure isn’t just professional. After being diagnosed with cancer, he applied his own methods to fight back, proof that what he teaches works when it matters most.

Testimonials

“James was a keynote speaker during UBS Global Health Week. He did captivate the audience from the first minute of his presentation till the very end. I found James a great speaker: as we all know it’s not that easy to keep attention of the audience the whole time of the presentation, but James did it. His speech was dynamic and passionate. Read More

Olesia Nünlist

Global Digital Marketing at UBS Asset Management

It was not only the speech that was amazing, but the fact that within an hour of his presentation, James managed to inspire a lot of people to make a change in their lives, or at least, to consider making a change. I highly recommend James Hewitt as a speaker if you want to bring a change and innovation in your business.”

Olesia Nünlist

Global Digital Marketing at UBS Asset Management

“We were looking for an inspiring speaker that would be able to share new insights and a new perspective. What we didn’t expect was for a total experience. From the moment, James, stepped onto stage to his closing remarks, the audience was gripped. James is able to combine elements of his work in sport, science and the corporate world to provide an engaging presentation.”

Katherine S.

QuantumBlack, a McKinsey company

“James received really high customer evaluations. He empowered the audience with takeaways that are easily put into practice. The message was all science-backed, and the presentation was exciting. On top of that, James was super nice and easy to work with.”

Ville S.

Nordic Business Forum

“When booking James we knew that we needed to find someone who can be educational yet engaging at the same time. James did not disappoint. He brought many interesting findings to light while engaging our MBA Alumni community. Through his story telling, presentation of data and personality, James was able to successfully tailor his message of sustainable high performance to a highly competitive crowd. Read More

Thomas B.

University of St. Gallen

If you are looking for someone who can captivate an audience and also bring forth evidence, James is the right person to call. We would gladly have James back on our campus in the future.”

Thomas B.

University of St. Gallen

“It was a real masterclass in turning something scientific and complex into something wonderfully accessible to everyone. It was everything I was hoping for… and more.”

Alison O.

CEO, Youth Sport Trust

Looking for more?

Related Speakers

Close

My Catalog

PDF

    This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

    Submit Clear All

    You have not added any speakers yet.