Date: Tuesday, 9 December 2025
Time: 9am ET/ 2pm UK / 7.30pm IST
Where: Online
Does this feel familiar? Your calendar is stacked with back-to-back meetings. You are leading across time zones with half the team remote. Culture feels harder to keep steady. People look fine on paper yet flag in reality. The workload is constant, attention is frayed and burnout is never far away.
This AWA Institute webinar offers a practical way through. We will use the Body Budget concept from Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett to explain why capable people run out of steam and what leaders can do about it. You will get a clear scientific framework from Nathan Gupta to understand the what and why, applied methods from Ken van Someren drawn from elite performance to show the where and how, and real examples from Newton Cheng on building programmes, spaces and culture at Google that protect cognitive capacity.
What you will learn
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The science of the Body Budget and why it underpins focus, mood and decision quality
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How overlapping priorities create compound effects on mental workload and what reduces them
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Practical tools to stabilise energy across the week
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How leading organisations translate the science into operating rhythms, environments and programmes that improve team and communal performance
Format and speakers
A fast paced 60 minute session
Featuring Nathan Gupta (Neuroscientist, AWA), Ken van Someren (Human Performance Scientist) and Newton Cheng (prev. Director of Health & Performance, Google). Designed for senior leaders, HR, workplace strategists and business decision-makers.
Register for our upcoming webinar today.
Speakers
Newton Cheng - Recently — Director of Health & Performance, Google
Newton previously led Health and Performance at Google, shaping programmes that support physical, mental, social and spiritual wellbeing at scale. He is an advocate for open, stigma-free conversations about mental health and frequently speaks on vulnerable leadership in high performance cultures. He also brings a competitive edge as a world champion powerlifter, blending elite training insight with practical workplace routines that protect energy and focus.
Ken van Someron - Human Performance Scientist
Ken is a performance scientist and consultant who helps organisations translate elite sport principles into everyday work. He owns KvS Performance, has advised world-class athletes and leaders for over 25 years, and has led innovation in industry. Previously he headed research and development at the GSK Human Performance Lab, bringing rigorous science to real-world performance challenges. He also lectures in Sport Performance and Innovation at Atlantic Technological University. Expect clear, actionable methods to periodise cognitive load and stabilise decision quality.
Nathan Gupta - Neuroscientist, AWA
Nathan is a neuroscientist at AWA who turns cutting-edge research into practical tools for leaders. His work focuses on cognitive performance in real workplaces, drawing on research into attention, flow state and EEG-based measures to explain why capacity fails and how to recover it. In this session he will demystify the Body Budget in plain language and connect it to day-to-day decisions on meetings, cadence and environment.