Sebastian Sheppard

Sebastian Sheppard specialises in building resilient, high-performing teams where precision, speed and pressure define success. With over two decades of leadership across Formula 1, aerospace, defence and post-merger integration, he led over 150 engineers at Alpine F1 for more than six years, managed budgets exceeding £15 million, and served as a Royal Navy helicopter pilot before directing transformation programmes at Altran (now Capgemini) across the UK and Northern Europe. Now Director of Seb Sheppard High Performance Consulting and a visiting lecturer at Oxford, Edinburgh and Melbourne, he equips leaders with actionable strategies to strengthen decision-making, build psychological safety and drive sustained performance under pressure.

Leading over 150 engineers through the high-stakes world of Formula 1 under the FIA Cost Cap, Sebastian Sheppard spent more than six years at Alpine F1 designing and developing race cars where milliseconds separate victory from defeat. That intensity, combined with earlier service as a Royal Navy anti-submarine helicopter pilot and senior transformation leadership across aerospace and defence, has shaped his approach to building teams that perform under pressure. Now Director of Seb Sheppard High Performance Consulting and an advisory board member for GTS Group, he works with organisations navigating complexity, speed and change, translating lessons from pit lanes, cockpits and boardrooms into frameworks that strengthen leadership, accelerate decision-making and embed resilience across teams and cultures.

Sebastian's career reflects a consistent focus on operational excellence and people-centred transformation. At Alpine F1, he grew the engineering team by 37 per cent through efficiency gains, established an engineer-led wellbeing initiative centred on mental health and psychological safety, and managed budgets exceeding £15 million across operational and capital projects. Before Formula 1, he served as Head of Transformation and Integration at Altran (now Capgemini) across the UK and Northern Europe, directing post-merger integrations for high-tech acquisitions and protecting organisational value through disciplined, human-first change management. His earlier roles include senior programme management at Airbus on the A400M Wing Final Assembly Line in Seville and the successful turnaround of a €30 million aerospace logistics operation. A native Spanish speaker raised in Chile, Sebastian combines global perspective with technical rigour, informed by service in the Royal Navy, collaboration with the Spanish and Chilean navies, and formative years spent on expeditions in Patagonia. In 2026, he delivered keynotes at the IWMA Conference at Silverstone on leadership in an AI age, the Team Defence Digital Engineering Conference on procurement mindset, and the FINBOURNE Technology LearnFest, alongside guest lectures at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, for the Artificial Intelligence Programme.

A visiting lecturer at the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Melbourne, Sebastian equips audiences with actionable strategies to navigate transformation, manage risk at speed and integrate new technology and talent with confidence. His speaking engagements blend technical insight with human empathy, demonstrating how psychological safety, clarity of purpose and disciplined execution underpin world-class performance. Whether addressing leaders managing change, teams operating under time pressure, or organisations striving to sustain excellence when margins are tight, he helps audiences build trust, make high-velocity decisions and turn setbacks into learning opportunities that strengthen resilience and unlock sustained performance over the long term.