Jeremy Heimans
The organisations leaders were trained to run are not the organisations they are now being asked to lead. Employees, customers, regulators and activists all expect participation, transparency and speed that the command-and-control playbook cannot deliver. The leaders who thrive in this environment are not the ones with the loudest brand or the biggest advertising budget; they are the ones who understand how influence actually flows in a hyperconnected system, and who can build the models that work with that grain rather than against it.
Jeremy Heimans is the co-author of New Power and co-founder of Purpose who helps leaders rebuild brand, employee engagement and influence strategy for a world where participation has replaced broadcast.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jeremy Heimans
- His intellectual authority is built on a named thesis. New Power, co-authored with Henry Timms, was shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, featured as the “Big Idea” in the Harvard Business Review, and accompanied by a TED talk viewed over 1.5 million times.
- The operating credentials are rare. As co-founder of GetUp!, Avaaz and All Out, and CEO of Purpose, he has built some of the most successful campaigning organisations and social movements of the last two decades, so he reasons about participation from live product experience.
- His framework, (Product + Purpose) × Participation, gives brand and marketing leaders a concrete equation rather than a worldview, which makes it easier to translate into campaign design and consumer engagement strategy.
- His recent work on AI participation, autonomous agents and governance scaffolding brings the New Power thesis into the question most executive teams are now actually wrestling with, how to build legitimacy around AI systems that are already in the building.
- The institutional recognition, Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, Chair of its Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation, the Ford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Visionary Award, means he opens doors for the organisations he speaks to as well as the audiences he addresses.
Biography highlights
- Co-founder and CEO of Purpose, a public-benefit corporation building social movements for brands, NGOs and philanthropies
- Co-founder of GetUp!, Avaaz and All Out
- Co-author of New Power with Henry Timms (Penguin Random House); FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year shortlist; HBR Big Idea feature
- TED talk on new power with over 1.5 million views
- World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; Chair of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation; Ford Foundation 75th Anniversary Visionary Award
- Educated at the University of Sydney and Harvard; earlier career at McKinsey
Biography
Power has changed shape. The argument that Jeremy Heimans built over two decades of campaigning and writing is that the organisations, brands and leaders who will matter in this century are the ones who understand participation as a structural force, not a communications channel. New Power, his book with Henry Timms, turned that argument into one of the most cited frames in contemporary leadership thinking, shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, featured as the Big Idea in Harvard Business Review, and anchored by a TED talk now viewed over 1.5 million times.
The credibility behind the frame is operational. Heimans co-founded GetUp! in Australia in 2005, a political organisation that grew to more members than all of Australia’s political parties combined, and was a co-founder of the global campaigning platforms Avaaz and All Out. His company, Purpose, is the public-benefit corporation he built to carry that expertise into brands, NGOs and philanthropies, helping them design the participation models that command-and-control marketing no longer produces.
Academically, he is a McKinsey alumnus with degrees from the University of Sydney and Harvard. Institutionally, he has been recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, chaired its Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation, and received the Ford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Visionary Award. His framework, (Product + Purpose) × Participation, is the simplest expression of what his advisory work delivers for consumer brands.
The current edge of the work is artificial intelligence. Heimans’ thesis on how participation builds legitimacy is increasingly being applied to AI deployment, autonomous agents and the governance scaffolding companies are building for large-scale AI use. For leadership teams trying to work out how to retain brand trust, employee commitment and regulatory standing as AI reshapes their operating model, he is one of the few commentators whose framework was already built for this shift.
Key speaking topics
- New power and the shift from broadcast to participation
- AI, autonomous agents and the governance of participation
- Brand building and consumer engagement under (Product + Purpose) × Participation
- Movement design for organisations, NGOs and advocacy
- Leadership and influence in hyperconnected systems
- The future of work and distributed authority
Ideal for
- CEOs, CMOs and communications leaders redesigning brand and stakeholder strategy for a participatory environment
- Chief AI officers, governance leads and executive committees building legitimacy around AI systems
- NGO and philanthropy leadership teams scaling movements and civic participation programmes
- World Economic Forum, public affairs and policy forums where civic and corporate power converge
Audience outcomes
- A working grasp of the New Power frame and how it changes marketing, leadership and governance decisions
- Concrete examples of brands, movements and platforms that have applied (or failed to apply) new power mechanics
- A clearer view of how participation can be designed into AI deployment and governance rather than retrofitted
- Practical models for civic, employee and customer engagement that work with the grain of hyperconnected systems