Ryan Hopkins: Did any of it actually work?
For years, workplace wellbeing has been filled with initiatives, surveys, apps, awareness campaigns and advice about resilience. Ryan Hopkins asks a more demanding question: did they actually make people healthier?
That question has shaped his career.
Ryan Hopkins is the award-winning founder of Healthi, bestselling author of 52 Weeks of Wellbeing, published in seven languages, and a two-time TEDx speaker. His work sits at the intersection of health, work, technology and human behaviour, with a particular focus on understanding what genuinely improves outcomes for people and organisations.
His approach is practical, deeply researched and grounded in evidence. Rather than treating wellbeing as a collection of isolated activities, Ryan looks at the systems surrounding people: how work is designed, where healthcare pathways fail, what the data reveals and how organisations can make better decisions.
His perspective also reflects an unusually broad experience of working life. Before advising executives and speaking to audiences around the world, Ryan dispensed prescriptions, sold mortgages, worked as an apprentice electrician, managed bars and ran nightclub doors. He understands work from the frontline to the boardroom and knows how to communicate with people regardless of title, industry or role.
From Deloitte to Bupa
At Deloitte, Ryan built and led the Global Future of Wellbeing consulting business, developing a more data-led approach to understanding how work affects both people and performance. The work positively impacted approximately 500,000 people and helped organisations look beyond participation figures and annual surveys to better understand meaningful outcomes.
Ryan continued this focus at Bupa, where he combined health claims, clinical pathways and workforce data to build a clearer picture of what was happening to people’s health. His work helped Bupa’s 4.2 million UK customers and 40 million global customers understand what was driving ill health, which interventions were making a difference and where people were getting lost within the healthcare system.
Together, these experiences gave Ryan a perspective that extends beyond traditional workplace wellbeing. He connects employee health with healthcare access, organisational performance and human behaviour, helping leaders understand not only where problems exist but what can be done about them.
Building Healthi
Ryan is now building Healthi with the ambition of bringing employers, insurers, healthcare providers, industry bodies and government together around a shared goal: understanding the true cost of ill health, proving the value of investing in people and helping more people reach the right support earlier.
Through Healthi, Ryan is tackling questions around data, prevention, healthcare access and workplace systems. Central to this work is the belief that improving wellbeing cannot simply mean placing more responsibility on employees who may already be exhausted. Organisations also need to examine the environments, structures and systems influencing people’s health.
A different conversation about wellbeing
Ryan has little interest in telling people to become more resilient while ignoring the systems that are exhausting them.
His keynotes are designed for organisations ready to have a more meaningful conversation about health and wellbeing. His talks explore subjects including:
- The relationship between work, health, technology and human behaviour
- Why traditional approaches to workplace wellbeing often fail
- How organisations can use data to understand what is really driving ill health
- How to identify which wellbeing and healthcare interventions genuinely improve outcomes
- The true organisational cost of poor health
- Why systems and working environments matter alongside individual behaviour
- How employers can help people reach the right healthcare support earlier
- How leaders can make wellbeing relevant to performance without losing sight of the human impact
Ryan takes complex evidence and makes it understandable without stripping away the nuance. Difficult subjects become easier to discuss, while abstract health and wellbeing challenges become practical questions that leaders and employees can engage with.
Book Ryan Hopkins for your event
Ryan Hopkins has delivered more than 200 keynotes to over 110,000 people and hosted major conferences for Bupa and SAP, including events with audiences in their thousands. His speaking experience includes organisations such as Google, Amazon, BP, Dyson, Coca-Cola, Bupa, the NHS, BBC, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Salesforce, Workday and Chanel.
On stage, Ryan is honest, deeply researched and funny. He combines evidence with engaging stories and an understanding of working life that stretches from frontline roles to global organisations.
For senior leaders, he brings experience of building global wellbeing strategies and working with large-scale health and workforce data. For employees, his message remains grounded in the realities of everyday work rather than corporate theory. And for audiences who have become cynical about workplace wellbeing, he brings a willingness to ask difficult questions and provide a clearer path towards meaningful improvement.
Book speaker Ryan Hopkins for an evidence-led and thought-provoking keynote that helps audiences rethink the relationship between work, health and performance.
Awards & recognition
Ryan’s work across wellbeing, healthcare, technology and leadership has earned extensive industry recognition. Most recently, in 2026, he received awards for Outstanding Use of Technology and Best Wellbeing Support Service, alongside being Highly Commended as Outstanding Health & Protection Leader of the Year. This followed the Breaking the Silence Award and Platform of the Year in 2025, UK Start Up of the Year in 2024, a Highly Commended recognition for Wellbeing Consultancy of the Year in 2023 and being named Global Emerging Wellbeing Leader of the Year in 2022.
