The London Speaker Bureau Brazil

The London Speaker Bureau Brazil is now open for business in Rio de Janeiro, managed by Regina Gingell. Brazil is one of the fastest-growing global economies, and Regina sees great prospects. Already this year, she has secured Nobel prize winners Joseph Stiglitz, Edmund Phelps, David Trimble and Muhammad Yunus to speak at client conferences.

The Irish team won the final two races of the A1 Grand Prix motorsport season at Brands Hatch earlier this month to clinch the world championship. The team is managed by Mark Gallagher, one of our top motivational speakers.

Often referred to as the World Cup of motorsport, A1GP (this year in only its fourth season,) pitches national teams against one another. Driving Ferrari-powered cars, teams and drivers combine to create a performance advantage - teamwork - with which Mark Gallagher, once described as 'head of making things happen' at the Jordan Grand Prix Formula One team, is extremely familiar.

Blind adventurer Miles Hilton-Barber, already famous for a series of achievements that include running across the Sahara desert, crossing Antarctica, and flying from London to Sydney in a micro-light aircraft, will attempt to become the first blind person to drive a drag car. He will take the controls of the machine at Santa Pod in Northamptonshire, The drag car he will drive is owned by European drag champion Guy Chamberlain, who will shout a numeric code to Miles as he accelerates down the track to cover the quarter mile in the shortest possible time. With Chamberlain as his navigator, Miles reached a speed of 150 mph in the rain during a recent training run at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground.

Neil Armstrong comments exclusively for TLSB on the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing:

Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1968. Talking to TLSB this week, he said:

'I am one of that ever reducing fraction of the Earth's population that was an observer of the birth of the space age in 1957. In fact, I was one of those fortunate enough to not only watch it happen, but be a part of it. In those early years, man-made objects flying in space were very few and far between. Now, a bit over a half-century later, collisions in space are being reported!

'It has been a very exciting time. We take a great deal of pride in our accomplishments in exploration and exploitation of the universe around us. But we are still in the infancy of space flight. I hope I can be around long enough to savour the new knowledge and vastly increasing benefits that will accrue from our continued pursuit of expansion of the human presence in our solar system.'

New Speakers

After three decades of working on stage, television and radio, Ruby Wax has recently completed an MSc in Psychotherapy and a course in neuroscience. She now runs management workshops, enabling business leaders to find a deeper, more direct level of communication with their clients and colleagues. The workshops combine her energy and irrepressible humour with scientific and theoretical learning, meaning that participants leave with a set of tools that will help them to lead teams more effectively.

In 2006, Lewis Gordon Pugh became the first swimmer in history to complete a long-distance swim in all five oceans of the world, a feat considered by many swimmers to be the ultimate challenge. He describes what it feels like to dive into minus 1.7°C water, which for most of us would be fatal in a matter of seconds, and how he is able to survive by using his mind to raise his core body temperature almost to fever pitch. He also uses his talks to highlight the environmental threat to the world's oceans.

Recent Events

TLSB South East Asia recently arranged for Roger Fisk to present a masterclass on President Obama's presidential campaign in Kuala Lumpur. Roger Fisk joined the Obama campaign - widely recognised as the most successful in presidential history - in January 2007, as National Director of Special Events, managing a nationwide grassroots fundraising team which raised a record-breaking US$100 million in 11 months while building the largest donor base in American history.

Augusto Lopez Claros, former Chief Economist at the World Economic Forum, recently spoke at the 2009 Global Leaders Forum Americas for Microsoft. The client told him that 'your ideas, valued insights and thoughts contributed greatly to the overall impact of this important event and underscored this year's theme of "Fostering Innovation and Productivity in the Americas."'

New Books

Tom Avery has published his latest book To the End of the Earth: The Race to Solve Polar Exploration's Greatest Mystery.

One of the UK's leading explorers, Tom Avery is one of only 41 people in history to have travelled to both the North Pole and the South Pole on foot. In April 2005 he electrified the exploration world in by recreating Robert Peary's disputed 1909 expedition to the North Pole. Travelling with equipment and in conditions much like Peary's own, Tom Avery proved the trip could have been done in 37 days, refuting the arguments of those who doubt Peary's achievements. In his new book, he asks whether Robert Peary was indeed, as he claimed, the first man to reach the North Pole.

Ram Charan, the much sought-after business adviser whose previous books have sold more than 2 million copies, has recently published Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: The New Rules for Getting Things Done in Difficult Times. He is interviewed on Fast Company magazine.