The short version
Twenty-plus years in marketing. Working with teams and organisations across the world. One question that wouldn't leave him alone: what actually makes someone brilliant?
The answer — drawn from his own 2026 research — reshaped how Jonathan thinks about leadership, culture, and the quiet qualities we've stopped measuring. That research is now the spine of everything he does on stage.
The longer version
Jonathan spent the best part of two decades as a marketing leader — running global campaigns for tech and fitness brands as well as leading marketing efforts for the hospitality and travel programmes at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, Rugby World Cup 2019 and World Athletics Championships 2017.
It's a CV that looks tidy on paper. In reality it was twenty years of learning — in boardrooms, in offices, across cultures — what great leadership looks like and, more honestly, what it doesn't.
The speaking started in parallel and has taken Jonathan into some genuinely varied rooms.
He's spoken on the keynote stage at Pax8 Beyond EMEA and hosted the Acronis day at MSP Global, two of the largest MSP events in Europe. He's spoken at the Narcissistic Abuse Conference, addressed school leavers at award ceremonies, hosted fireside chats, moderated panels, MC'd customer events and sales kickoffs, and appeared across marketing podcasts and webinars. If that wasn't enough, he has presented to audiences at Rugby World Cup 2019 and Tokyo Olympic Games events.
In 2026, that body of work proved to be crucial when Jonathan won the PSA Emerging Speaker of the Year Award — the Professional Speaking Association's national competition for emerging speakers — with his talk Be More Fudge. The competition judged entrants on engagement, originality, stagecraft, delivery, and bookability. He is now guaranteed keynote speaker on the main stage at PSA Impact! 2027.
Why Brilliant Humans
A deceptively simple question
In early 2026 Jonathan ran a piece of research on a deceptively simple premise: what makes someone brilliant? Not clever. Not successful. Brilliant — not necessarily the kind of person who lights up a room, but the one who you remember long after the meeting ends.
The top three answers weren't intelligence, achievement, or charisma.
Explore The IdeasThe 2026 Brilliant Humans Research
What actually makes someone brilliant?
01
Kindness
The quality most cited when people describe their most memorable colleagues, leaders, and teachers.
02
Empathy
The capacity to understand what someone else is carrying — and factor that into how you lead.
03
Inspiration
Not motivational posters. The kind that makes someone quietly raise their standard because of how you showed up.
Three qualities we think of as "soft". Three we almost never measure, develop, or reward in organisations. And yet — there they were, in answer after answer, from people across industries and across borders. That finding is the foundation of Jonathan's work on stage. It's what audiences leave with — the uncomfortable, hopeful realisation that we already know what good looks like. We've just stopped naming it.
Ready to book?
Get Jonathan on your stage
If you're planning a leadership summit, culture conference, SKO, all-hands or school event, and you want a speaker who'll make the room feel something and then do something — get in touch. Jonathan personally replies within 2 working days.
