HeadRoom with Jenson Button
Formula 1 World Champion Jenson Button MBE began his racing career on the karting track where he achieved instant success, Winning the British Super Prix in 1989, aged nine. The following year he made the step from karts to cars. He won the British Formula Ford championship, with nine wins for Haywood Racing, and triumphed in the prestigious Formula Ford Festival ahead of Dan Wheldon and Nicolas Kiesa. After such a successful transition to racing cars, he won the 1998 McLaren Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award. At 19 he entered the British Formula Three championship with Promatecme and won three races, finishing the year as the top rookie, third overall behind Marc Hynes and Luciano Burti. Jenson got his big break in Formula 1 in 2000 with Williams Racing. He became the youngest British driver to start an F1 race, aged just 20 years and 53 days, as he made his debut in Australia. That year, he produced some standout performances including finishing fourth at the German Grand Prix in Hockenheim, in addition to stunning the Formula One paddock by qualifying third for the Belgian Grand Prix. Jenson’s maiden Grand Prix victory came in 2006 as he won a remarkable Hungarian Grand Prix after starting 14th on the grid. Jenson arrived at McLaren as reigning world champion in 2010 and immediately got off to a great start with wins in Australia and China. He continued with McLaren Honda until the end of the 2017 season, where he played a critical part in developing and improving the technical package. In January 2021, Jenson joined Williams Racing as Brand Ambassador on a multi-year deal, 21 years after he first raced for the team. Jenson also launched JBXE to compete in the all-electric SUV off-road racing series Extreme E from the 2021 season.
Dr. Rod Berger is a keynote speaker, moderator, producer, author, and expert in strategic storytelling. Berger’s book, The Narrative Edge: Authentic Storytelling That Meets The Moment (Wiley), hits bookstores in late 2025. He draws on more than 4,000 interviews conducted worldwide for Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fair Observer, including a cover story about former Virgin Entertainment co-founder Jason Felts, for Los Angeles Magazine, as well as various podcasts. He has captured the narratives of investors, CEOs, renowned entrepreneurs, bestselling authors, scholars, and cultural icons such as NBA legends Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley, as well as United Nations officials and Van Halen’s Sammy Hagar, while also exploring the behind-the-scenes world of Formula 1.
Berger has met with the Crown Princess of Sweden, Pope Francis, United Nations officials, and NGO leaders, covering stories of water insecurity with WaterAid, the intergenerational refugee crisis faced by displaced Sudanese in Uganda, and the impacts of child marriage in Western Africa with the Le Korsa Foundation.
Berger served as a guest lecturer at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management for nearly two decades, focusing on the power of storytelling in business.
He has partnered with The Jim Henson Company to create a television show, The Ultimate GOAT, that combines his passion for distant lands and storytelling with culture, sports, and puppetry for family programming.
Berger conducts moderated keynote events that blend storytelling with live, on-stage narratives featuring cultural icons such as Opal Lee, the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and recognized as the “Grandmother” of Juneteenth. In 2023, Berger received the inaugural Pangea International Literacy Prize and delivered his TEDx Talk, “Story is Our Currency.” He lives in Franklin, Tennessee, with his wife and two children.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
