Breakfast at the Kimpton Fitzroy with Kirsty Hulse

On 28 May 2026, PepTalk partnered with VenueScanner to host a breakfast briefing at the Kimpton Fitzroy London, the Grade II-listed hotel on Russell Square that recently opened its event spaces to external bookings. Originally built as the Hotel Russell in 1898 and designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll, its terracotta facade is one of Bloomsbury's more recognisable landmarks, and it made a fitting backdrop for a morning built around showing up with more presence, not less. It turned into a genuinely useful Thursday: thoughtful, engaging, and above all practical, rather than the usual breakfast-event small talk, and a good example of what a smaller, well-hosted format can do that a big conference stage often can't.

Keynote speaker: Kirsty Hulse

Keynote speaker Kirsty Hulse ran a session on confidence and communication, and it landed exactly the way the best sessions do: people left feeling like they'd been seen rather than lectured. Her framing throughout was that confidence isn't an innate trait but a skill built through repetition, and the session translated that into habits people could actually take back to their teams, rather than a one-off feel-good hit that fades by Friday. One attendee put it simply: "Listening to Kirsty speak about confidence in the workplace was just so relevant and made me feel like I've come a very long way."

Kirsty runs confidence and communication training under Roar Training and created Confidence Live, and has trained more than 150,000 professionals at organisations including Amazon, Capital One, and LinkedIn. She's also a former stand-up comic who performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and The Comedy Store, and the author of Don't Swear at Work (and Other Bullshit), alongside her earlier book The Future is Freelance. She co-hosts a podcast, Talk Worky To Me, with Henry Blanchard.

PepTalk Fact: Don't Swear at Work (and Other Bullshit) was named one of the 12 best motivational books of 2025 by Hello magazine 📚

That background shows up directly in her delivery: self-deprecating, story-led, and genuinely funny. She connects with a room rather than performing at it, which is exactly why the breakfast format worked so well: there was space for people to ask questions and talk through their own confidence sticking points rather than just listen.

One of her most-requested talks is Practical Optimism, which covers the science of staying motivated through difficulty. She also speaks regularly on confidence and courage at work, productivity and burnout, and influence and persuasion, adjusting the framing of each session to the audience in front of her rather than delivering the same talk twice. If you're building a session brief around confidence for your own team, this is the same territory her PepTalk sessions cover.

The venue

As for the venue, the Kimpton Fitzroy is the kind of place that sets an event up to impress before anyone's said a word. The iconic Galvin Bar space seats 22 to 27 guests and suits breakfast briefings, leadership sessions, and intimate client events well, close quarters that make a confidence-and-communication session feel more like a conversation than a lecture, and small enough that a keynote speaker can genuinely field questions rather than just deliver from the front.

That combination, a distinctive room paired with the right speaker for it, is really the point of PepTalk and VenueScanner working together: one of us can help you find the space, the other can help you find the person who fills it. If you're pairing a London venue with a keynote speaker for your own event, our roundup of the Top Motivational Speakers in London is a good starting point, and Five UK Venues and the Speakers That Bring Them to Life covers a few more spaces like the Galvin Bar that punch above their size.

Find a venue via VenueScanner, or get in touch with PepTalk and we'll help you find the right speaker to go with it.

💡 Interested in booking Kirsty Hulse, or pairing a London venue with the right keynote speaker for your event? Let us know, and we'll find the perfect PepTalk expert for your organisation. Send us a message and we'll set up a free strategy call. Remember, it's always a good time to get a PepTalk!