Speakers
Session
This dynamic keynote delivers a compelling blend of storytelling and practical strategies to strengthen leadership, resilience, planning, and decision-making under pressure.
Led by former SAS operator and Who Dares Wins star Colin MacLachlan, the session draws from high-stakes military missions to explore how elite teams lead through uncertainty and change. Through a mix of powerful insights and real-world lessons, participants will gain tools to navigate complex challenges, communicate with clarity, and lead with confidence in high-pressure environments.
Learning objectives:
Sponsored by Risk Management Partners.
Colin Maclachlan, star of Channel Four's reality TV drama SAS: Who Dares Wins and Channel 5’s Secrets of the SAS, is an operator with over 30 years of security and risk related experience.
Colin joined the army in 1989 and was fortunate enough to have been involved in high profile and daring missions. He is one of the few men who have been involved in hostage negotiations, hostage rescue and been a hostage themselves.
In 2000, he waded through swamps in Sierra Leone to hunt down the West Side Boys, a guerilla gang holding five British soldiers hostage. It was a mission so daring and dangerous, they nicknamed it Operation Certain Death.
Colin was also the first sniper on the scene when a hijacked Afghan flight with 180 passengers landed in London in the same year, sparking a stand-off that lasted four days - the longest standing hostage siege on UK soil to date.
Four years later, Colin found himself on the other side of a rescue mission after he was taken hostage in Iraq. Blindfolded, battered and stripped naked, he felt a gun pressed to his head and heard them pull the trigger in a mock execution. Colin only survived long enough for British troops to rescue him because the terrorists who held him wanted to film his suffering in a propaganda video before they executed him.
Colin left the SAS shortly after doing an exchange programme with both Delta Force and Seal Team 6. After doing security consultancy for the Saudi Royal Family, A-List celebrities and US media networks, he decided to fund himself through university. Colin is now involved in TV, book, radio and video games and also does a lot with charity: he is an ambassador for the Lee Rigby Foundation, Pilgrim Bandits and NSPCC among others. He has also founded his own charity, Who Dares Cares, that aims to link and support veterans as well as others that encounter stress.
Having had both an exciting and varied career, Colin is an excellent speaker on a wide variety of topics including resilience, teamwork, leadership, risk, motivation, conflict resolution, change management, negotiation, A.I and elite performance. He is also an experienced presenter and host for events and is co-founder of Stoic Events, a team building organization. His autobiography entitled The Pilgrim came out in 2025 and sold out in 3 weeks.