Futuro do Trabalho speakers

Why organisations work with Jason Lauritsen He turns the manager-employee relationship into a working model, not a slogan, through The Check-In Method, a named and published approach leaders can install the week after the keynote. His research seat at Quantum Workplace gave him visibility across thousands of employers and millions of engagement responses, which grounds every claim in pattern data rather than anecdote. His book Unlocking High Performance reframes performance management as a relationship discipline, endorsed by Daniel H. Pink, and is used by HR leaders as a practical redesign guide. He speaks fluently to both the CHRO and the frontline manager, which is rare. The same session lands with executives rethinking policy and with line leaders rethinking their next one-to-one. He brings the credibility of an operator who has run the system from both sides: corporate HR leadership where he helped double revenue per employee and halve turnover, and now CEO of Connected Performance Group, advising executive teams on the same problem at the source. Biography highlights CEO of Connected Performance Group, advising CEOs and executive teams on the performance systems that turn strategy into execution. Creator of the Connected Performance System, a framework for leadership clarity, alignment, and performance enablement, with original research presented at Workhuman Live Orlando 2026. Author of Unlocking High Performance (Kogan Page, 2018), a performance-management redesign endorsed by Daniel H. Pink. Co-author with Joe Gerstandt of Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships. As a corporate executive, helped double revenue per employee while cutting employee turnover in half. Former Director of Best Places to Work at Quantum Workplace, leading research across thousands of participating organisations. Biography Engagement has been one of the most measured aspects of corporate life for two decades, and it has barely moved. The data is rich, the pulse surveys run quarterly, and most managers still cannot describe what actually changes a disengaged employee’s trajectory. That gap between measurement and behaviour is the terrain Jason Lauritsen works in. Earlier in his career, as a corporate executive, he helped double revenue per employee while cutting turnover in half. He then led the research team for the Best Places to Work programme at Quantum Workplace, which gave him a cross-sectional view of engagement data across thousands of employers. The conclusion he draws from both sides is direct: employees do not experience work as a contract or a process, they experience it as a relationship, and they leave when the relationship fails. That thesis runs through two books. Unlocking High Performance (Kogan Page, 2018) argues that performance management collapses when it is built as a compliance process and works when it is built around conversation. Social Gravity, co-authored with Joe Gerstandt, maps the laws that govern how workplace relationships actually form. The Check-In Method, the framework he is best known for, translates the relationship argument into the specific moments managers can do differently on a Monday morning. As CEO of Connected Performance Group, his current work goes one layer up. The Connected Performance System treats connection as the operating mechanism through which strategy turns into execution, and locates the leadership, cultural, and operational conditions that strengthen or erode it. Cited across Forbes, Fast Company, HR Executive, Talent Management, and SHRM, his sessions give CHROs and executive teams a named system to install, not just an argument to agree with. Key speaking topics Employee engagement Connection as a performance driver Performance management redesign The manager-employee relationship Employee experience Talent retention Workplace culture Ideal for CHROs and VPs of People rethinking engagement or performance strategy HR and people-team leaders preparing a manager-effectiveness programme Executive teams whose engagement scores have plateaued and whose attrition is climbing Line manager audiences at leadership summits, where the goal is behaviour change, not theory Audience outcomes A clear model for treating the manager-employee bond as a relationship, with the specific manager behaviours that sustain it. The Check-In Method as an installable practice, including the questions managers can use in their next one-to-one. A diagnosis for why performance management processes fail, and what to redesign rather than patch. A sharper read of engagement data, so leaders stop optimising scores and start changing the experience behind them. Language HR and line leaders can share, which closes the gap between policy intent and what employees actually feel.

Why organisations work with Jeanette Bronée She treats self-care as a leadership discipline, not a wellbeing programme. Her Power-Pausing method is built for executives who cannot afford to slow down but cannot afford to decide badly either. She brings two decades of work with Fortune 500 organisations including Microsoft, BlackRock, HSBC, Siemens, and the U.S. Navy, and has presented at the United Nations. Her book The Self-Care Mindset (Wiley, 2022) gives clients a tested framework leaders can apply between sessions, not a speaker high that fades by Monday. She contributed the chapter on Power-Pausing in Thinkers50 and Wiley’s Connectedness, a recognition that places her work alongside the field’s most cited voices on human connection and leadership. Her Danish business background and US executive experience give her a register that travels comfortably across European and North American leadership audiences. Biography highlights Author, The Self-Care Mindset, Wiley (2022) Contributing author, Connectedness, Thinkers50 and Wiley, foreword by Rita McGrath Three-time TEDx speaker, including TEDxUNCPembroke Founder of Path for Life, established 2004 Former Board Member, National Speakers Association New York Speaking clients include Microsoft, BlackRock, HSBC, Siemens, eBay, McKesson, U.S. Navy, SHRM, and the United Nations Biography Most leadership advice on pressure assumes the answer is more discipline. Bronée argues the opposite. The capacity to lead well under sustained load is built by what happens in the seconds before a decision, not by what happens after burnout has already arrived. Her Power-Pausing method, developed over twenty years of consulting work, treats that micro-pause as a metacognitive operating practice, not a wellness habit. The work has a specific origin. She built her first company at 23, ran a team of 50 by 25, and was diagnosed with the early markers of the cancer that had killed both her parents. She left the fashion industry, founded Path for Life in 2004, and spent the next two decades testing what actually changes when leaders rebuild their relationship to attention, stress, and trust. That research now sits in The Self-Care Mindset, published by Wiley in 2022, and in her contributing chapter to Connectedness, the Thinkers50 and Wiley volume on authentic human connection at work, with a foreword by Columbia Business School’s Rita McGrath. She has delivered three TEDx talks and worked with Microsoft, BlackRock, HSBC, Siemens, McKesson, the U.S. Navy, and the United Nations. The current emphasis is on trust and judgement in AI-saturated workplaces. As more cognitive load shifts to machines, the leadership variables that matter most are the ones that cannot be automated: the quality of attention a leader brings to a hard call, and the conditions that allow a team to disagree well. Bronée’s argument is that those variables are trainable. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under pressure Power-Pausing as a decision-making practice Building cultures of trust in AI-saturated workplaces The Self-Care Mindset for senior leaders Care-Driven Leadership Resilience and sustainable performance Human capacity in the age of AI Ideal for CEOs, CHROs and senior HR leaders rebuilding the social contract with their workforce Leadership development sponsors designing programmes for newly senior executives Organisations introducing AI tools and worried about the cultural cost of speed without judgement Conferences for women in senior leadership and executive transition programmes Audience outcomes A working definition of self-care as a leadership capability, separate from wellbeing programming The Power-Pausing practice as a tool for higher-quality decisions under time pressure A clearer view of how trust is built or eroded in the small interactions that precede big calls Language to use with their own teams about capacity, not just performance An honest read on where their current culture rewards urgency at the expense of judgement

Why organisations work with Jef Staes He gives leaders a working language for the conflict at the heart of innovation: the Red Monkey model treats the awkward, radical idea as the asset, and the cultural reflex to suppress it as the real problem to solve. His 2D to 3D framework names the specific shift companies are stuck in, from organisations built on standardised competence to ones that run on passion and continuous learning. He has lived both sides of the argument. Two decades inside Siemens and GTE ATEA as software designer, training manager and Corporate Learning Officer, then twenty more building the Red Monkey Company around what he learned was missing. His work is grounded in the academic mainstream of Belgian management education, with visiting lectureships at Vlerick, UAMS and EHSAL, but his delivery is built for general audiences, including four TEDx stages. He addresses culture and innovation as one problem, not two. Most speakers pick a side; Staes argues you cannot fix one without rewiring the other. Biography highlights Author of the Red Monkey trilogy: “I was a sheep”, “My manager is a hero”, and “My organisation is a jungle”. Founder of Red Monkey Company, where he develops the Red Monkey Story and the Engine of Innovation Mindset with client organisations. Former Corporate Learning Officer at Siemens Belgium; earlier career as software designer at GTE ATEA in Belgium and the USA. Visiting lecturer at Vlerick Business School, the University of Antwerp Management School (UAMS), and EHSAL. TEDx speaker on multiple occasions, including TEDxUtrecht with “Behave, brake for red monkeys”. Recurring keynote at OEB Global (Online Educa Berlin), including the Spotlight Stage session “Red Monkey Disruption”. Biography Most organisations are not built to change. They are built to standardise, to repeat, to filter out the awkward. That is the tension Jef Staes has spent four decades inside, first as a software designer at GTE ATEA, then as a training manager and Corporate Learning Officer at Siemens Belgium, and now as the founder of Red Monkey Company. His central argument is that innovation does not fail because organisations lack ideas. It fails because the cultural reflex of any mature company is to reject the radical idea and the person who carries it. The Red Monkey is his name for both. The work, then, is not to generate more ideas, but to redesign the conditions under which a Red Monkey can survive long enough to be tested. Around that core sit two sharper frames. The 2D to 3D shift describes how companies move from running on standardised competence to running on passion-fed expertise. The Power Defect names the structural mismatch between formal authority and actual capability in an information-rich economy. Together they give leaders a vocabulary for problems they usually only feel. Staes writes in metaphor on purpose. The trilogy (“I was a sheep”, “My manager is a hero”, “My organisation is a jungle”) is built for the operator, not the academic, and his TEDx and OEB Global stages reach the same audience. The argument lands because it is unsentimental about how organisations really behave when something new walks in. Key speaking topics Innovation culture and the management of disruptive ideas The 2D to 3D organisational shift The Red Monkey conflict model Learning organisations in the information age Leadership in environments resistant to change Talent, passion and the limits of standardised competence Ideal for Boards and executive teams whose innovation programmes consistently stall after launch CHROs and Chief Learning Officers redesigning learning and talent systems for a knowledge economy Transformation leads and innovation directors trying to protect radical ideas inside conservative cultures Leadership conferences in technology, manufacturing, financial services and the public sector Audience outcomes A working model for why their best ideas keep dying inside their own organisation Language to describe the conflict between standardised competence and passion-driven expertise A clear position on what 3D leadership demands of managers, and where most stop short Recognition of the Power Defect inside their own structure and where it is costing them speed A reframing of resistance to change as an organisational design problem, not a people problem

Why organisations work with Jennifer Vessels The P.E.A.C.E. Framework gives transformation a structured language and methodology: not abstract change theory, but a tested roadmap built from live engagements inside organisations including Adobe, Cisco, and Novartis She brings Silicon Valley operational experience applied globally. Having led transformation programmes across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, she translates insider knowledge of how the world’s most innovation-intensive organisations actually work into practical approaches for complex, multinational businesses She is an active CEO running transformation programmes concurrently with her speaking engagements, meaning her insights reflect current deployments, not retrospective case studies Her work on generational integration, aligning Gen Z talent, AI capability, and experienced human capital, addresses a workforce tension that most change and transformation speakers do not tackle with equivalent specificity Through the Executive Growth Alliance (EGA), she connects audiences to a live community of F100 leaders navigating the same challenges, giving organisations access to a peer learning network beyond the event itself Biography highlights CEO of Next Step, Silicon Valley consulting firm leading business transformation for global enterprises since 2006 Founder, Executive Growth Alliance: a global peer community of Fortune 100 leaders focused on future-of-work and AI adoption Creator of the P.E.A.C.E. Framework (Purpose, Exploration, Action, Collaboration, Empowerment), deployed across organisations including Adobe, Cisco, Google, IKEA, Microsoft, Novartis, and Schneider Electric Awarded “Best Technology Speaker ’24” (IOFM, Diversified Communications) Author of No Clue, No Fear: Navigating Storms of Change; new book Emergence: How Leaders Break Free from Outdated Thinking (Wiley, October 2026) Featured by EFMD, the World Economic Forum, the Institute of Directors, the San Jose Mercury News, and The New York Times MBA, San Jose State University; MS Occupational Psychology, University of London; INSEAD board governance certification Early career: international business development at Tandberg (acquired by Cisco); Director of Global Sales Operations at Tandem Computers Biography Leadership thinking built for the Industrial Age is not built for what organisations are experiencing now. Most change programmes assume that if the strategy is sound and the technology is right, transformation will follow. It does not. The missing variable is almost always how leaders are thinking, and what they are willing to let go of. Jennifer Vessels has spent two decades inside that gap, working as CEO of Next Step across Silicon Valley, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Her client list includes Adobe, Cisco, Google, IKEA, Microsoft, Novartis, and Schneider Electric: organisations navigating business model change, AI adoption, and leadership redesign at scale. From that operational experience, she developed the P.E.A.C.E. Framework: a structured methodology giving leaders a repeatable roadmap through disruptive change rather than a case for why change is necessary. What distinguishes her position is its currency. She is not drawing on past engagements. As an active CEO running transformation programmes alongside her speaking work, the examples she brings to audiences reflect live challenges rather than archived successes. She also founded the Executive Growth Alliance, a community of F100 leaders using collaborative challenge-resolution as a vehicle for building future-readiness collectively. Her book Emergence: How Leaders Break Free from Outdated Thinking (Wiley, October 2026), endorsed by Thinkers50 co-founder Stuart Crainer, extends the framework into a broader argument about the leadership models that are no longer fit for purpose, and what replaces them. Key speaking topics AI Adoption and Human-Centred Integration Change Leadership and Organisational Transformation Future of Work and Generational Integration The P.E.A.C.E. Framework for Leading Through Change Silicon Valley Innovation Applied to Global Business Business Model Redesign in an AI Era Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams navigating business model transformation or AI adoption programmes Boards and executive committees seeking a working practitioner’s perspective on AI-era leadership CHROs and people leaders managing generational integration, workforce redesign, and future-of-work strategy Transformation leads and change management functions inside large multinational organisations Audience outcomes A structured, repeatable framework (P.E.A.C.E.) that gives teams shared language for leading through uncertainty, usable Monday morning A clear diagnosis of why AI adoption and transformation programmes stall at the leadership level, with specific approaches to address it Practical tools for integrating generational diversity, particularly Gen Z talent alongside experienced human capital and AI capability A first-hand view of how organisations including Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia are integrating people with advanced technology, applied to the audience’s own market A mindset shift from defending what is crumbling to building what is emerging, positioning disruption as a source of competitive advantage

Why organisations work with Jeremy Blain He has published the operating detail behind distributed leadership, including a five-point organisational blueprint and a 90-day implementation roadmap, so the conversation moves past intent into execution. His OpenHR framework, co-authored with Dr. Rochelle Haynes, gives HR and people leaders a working model for designing a workforce that blends employees, contractors, and open talent without losing coherence. Twenty-five years operating as a CEO and board officer across the UK and Asia, including seven years running an international consultancy from Singapore, mean the boardroom register is native, not learned. Recognition from credible third parties, Gold at the 2024 Global Book Awards for Unleash the Inner CEO and ACQ5 International Gamechanger of the Year 2023, confirms the work has been independently judged on substance. He brings frameworks that travel beyond the keynote, with diagnostic tools and culture-building activities organisations can take into their own leadership development programmes. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Performance Works International, advising boards and executive teams on leadership and digital transformation. Author of The Inner CEO and the second edition Unleash the Inner CEO, both award-winning titles on distributed leadership. Co-author with Dr. Rochelle Haynes of OpenHR: The Human Capital Framework for the Blended Workforce. Fellow of the Institute of Directors, London since 2003; senior board advisor to WDHB and co-founder of the Transformational Leadership Acceleration Institute. Named International Gamechanger of the Year by ACQ5 in 2023. Featured in Forbes, The Times of London, CEO Today, Dialogue by Duke CE, and Business Matters; host of the Rethink Leadership podcast. Biography Distributed leadership has been talked about for two decades. What has been missing is a working model that boards and operating committees can actually run. Jeremy Blain has spent his career building that model, first as a CEO and board officer in the UK and Asia, and now as the founder of Performance Works International. The argument is set out in The Inner CEO and its updated second edition, Unleash the Inner CEO, which won Gold in the Business Leadership category at the 2024 Global Book Awards. The book offers a five-point blueprint for the conditions, structures, and processes that make distributed leadership operational, plus a 90-day roadmap for managers and individual contributors. It is closer to an implementation manual than a thesis. A second strand of the work, OpenHR, co-authored with Dr. Rochelle Haynes, addresses what happens when the workforce itself is no longer a single category. As organisations blend employees, contractors, freelancers, and open talent, traditional human capital systems strain. OpenHR offers a framework, glossary, and templates for designing people strategy across that mix. The credibility behind the frameworks is operational. Seven years running an international consultancy from Singapore. Twenty-five years in corporate learning and human capital. Senior board roles at WDHB and the Intercontinental School of Economics and Applied Sciences. ACQ5 named him International Gamechanger of the Year in 2023, and his commentary appears in Forbes, The Times of London, and Dialogue by Duke CE. Boards work with him because the prescriptions come with the receipts. Key speaking topics Distributed leadership as an operating model Digital and AI transformation for boards and executive teams Human capital strategy for the blended workforce Empowerment and accountability at scale Leadership development across multinational and multi-generational teams Culture and capability for hybrid, AI-enabled organisations Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and executive committees rewiring decision rights and accountability across the organisation CHROs and chief people officers designing for a workforce that combines full-time, contract, and open talent Boards reviewing the leadership and culture preconditions for digital and AI transformation Transformation, change, and leadership development leads building scalable programmes across regions Audience outcomes A clearer view of where authority and accountability are misaligned in their own organisation A practical reference model for distributing leadership without losing strategic coherence A framework for designing human capital strategy across employees, contractors, and open talent Specific diagnostic questions to take into the next executive committee or board agenda Language for confronting the gap between stated leadership values and observed leadership behaviour

Why organisations work with Jeremy Rifkin He is the architect of an economic framework that the European Parliament adopted by formal declaration in 2007 and that has been translated into multi-hundred-page regional deployment roadmaps in Hauts-de-France, Rotterdam-The Hague, and Luxembourg. He has advised four European Commission presidents in sequence (Prodi, Barroso, Juncker, von der Leyen) and held that advisory line through three political cycles, which is rare for any external economic thinker. His thesis connects energy, communication, and mobility infrastructure into a single capital story, so boards leave with a way to sequence decarbonisation, digital, and supply chain decisions instead of treating them as separate budget lines. His twenty-plus books, including The End of Work, The Third Industrial Revolution, The Zero Marginal Cost Society, The Green New Deal, The Age of Resilience, and Planet Aqua, give him a body of work that named institutional buyers already know, which shortens the credibility conversation inside large organisations. He taught CEOs and senior leadership at Wharton Executive Education from 1995 to 2016, so the register is built for senior corporate audiences, not policy seminars. Biography highlights Principal architect of the Third Industrial Revolution economic plan, formally endorsed by the European Parliament in May 2007. Advisor to the European Commission under presidents Romano Prodi, Jose Manuel Barroso, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Ursula von der Leyen. President of TIR Consulting Group LLC, which has produced full Third Industrial Revolution roadmaps for the Hauts-de-France region, the Metropolitan Region of Rotterdam and The Hague, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Author of 20+ books translated into more than thirty languages, including The Third Industrial Revolution, The Zero Marginal Cost Society, The Green New Deal, The Age of Resilience, and Planet Aqua. Senior lecturer, Wharton School Executive Education Program, University of Pennsylvania, 1995 to 2016. Recipient of the 13th German Sustainability Award (2020) and honorary doctorates from Hasselt University and the University of Liege (2015). Biography The European Parliament formally endorsed the Third Industrial Revolution as a long-term economic road map in May 2007. Jeremy Rifkin wrote it. Since then, the framework has been the reference document behind successive Commission decisions on energy, digital, and mobility infrastructure, and behind regional deployment plans in Hauts-de-France, Rotterdam and The Hague, and Luxembourg. The argument is that every major economic shift in history is a convergence of three infrastructures: communication, energy, and transport. When those three move together, the productive base of the economy is rebuilt. Rifkin’s contribution is to specify what that convergence looks like now, with a digital communication internet, a renewable energy internet, and an automated mobility internet, and to put numbers, sequencing, and policy choices around it. That is the work he has carried into advisory rooms across four European Commission presidencies, from Prodi to von der Leyen, and into engagements with the Chinese leadership during the run-up to the 13th Five-Year Plan. His TIR Consulting Group brings utilities, ICT firms, and engineering and construction companies into the same room as regional governments to design the roadmaps in detail. The body of work behind the advisory practice is unusually large. Twenty-plus books, translated into more than thirty languages, running from The End of Work through The Third Industrial Revolution, The Zero Marginal Cost Society, The Green New Deal, The Age of Resilience, and Planet Aqua (2024), selected by Nature among its five best science picks of the year. The German Sustainability Award followed in 2020. Few speakers in the energy and economy field can point to a framework that a parliament has formally adopted and that is being built, region by region, on the ground. Key speaking topics The Third Industrial Revolution Energy transition and the renewable energy internet The economics of decarbonisation Smart infrastructure and the Internet of Things economy The future of work in a zero marginal cost economy Climate resilience and the age of rewilding Water, food, and the planetary economy Geopolitics of the green transition Ideal for Boards and executive committees building multi-decade capital plans for the energy transition. CEOs, CSOs, and heads of strategy in energy, utilities, infrastructure, mobility, real estate, and heavy industry. Policy and public affairs leaders working across the EU, national governments, and city regions. Investor audiences allocating to climate, infrastructure, and transition capital. Audience outcomes A common framework for connecting energy, digital, and mobility investment decisions into one capital story. A clearer view of how EU and major regional climate policy is likely to evolve, and what that means for sector-by-sector capital allocation. Specific reference points from the Hauts-de-France, Rotterdam-The Hague, and Luxembourg roadmaps that can be applied to a company’s own transition plan. A sharper sense of where the platform, ownership, and competitive economics of energy and mobility are heading as marginal costs fall. Language and argument that translate well to a board, to investors, and to regulators.

Why organisations work with Jerry Kaplan He has built the technology he now teaches. Two of his four startups went public, his team at GO Corporation produced the first commercial tablet operating system, and he co-founded the first internet auction site five months before eBay. He teaches the social and economic impact of AI at Stanford and writes the Oxford University Press primers that policymakers and boards actually cite. That sits between technical depth and decision-grade clarity. His framing of AI’s labour market consequences in Humans Need Not Apply was selected by The Economist as a top ten science and technology book of 2015, well before generative AI made the question urgent. He approaches AI as a question of competitive advantage, regulation, and capital allocation, not as a feature roadmap. Boards leave with a sharper view of what they are actually deciding. Biography highlights Adjunct Lecturer, Stanford University (Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy; Department of Computer Science) Fellow, Centre for Legal Informatics, Stanford Law School Founding CEO, GO Corporation (PenPoint OS, tablet computing) Co-founder, Onsale Inc., the first internet auction site (IPO 1997) Author, Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2024) and Humans Need Not Apply (Yale University Press, 2015), an Economist top ten book PhD in Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania; inventor on more than a dozen patents; over twenty peer-reviewed papers across ACM and IEEE journals Biography Tablet computing, online auctions, expert systems, and one of the first commercial personal information managers were all built in Silicon Valley before most people had heard of them. Kaplan was inside each of those stories. He was founding CEO of GO Corporation, the company whose PenPoint operating system anticipated the iPad by two decades, and he co-founded Onsale, the first internet auction site, five months before eBay. That operating history is the reason his current work on artificial intelligence is taken seriously by board-level audiences. He teaches the social and economic impact of AI at Stanford and is a Fellow at the Centre for Legal Informatics at Stanford Law School. The Oxford University Press primers he writes, including Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know, are designed for readers who need to decide, not just to understand. His 2015 book Humans Need Not Apply, published by Yale University Press and named one of The Economist’s top ten science and technology books that year, argued that AI’s labour market effects would arrive faster than most institutions were preparing for. The argument has aged unusually well. It now reads as a brief on the question every executive committee is asking about generative systems. The combination of a working technologist, a serial founder with two IPOs, and a current Stanford lecturer is rare. Kaplan uses it to translate AI from a procurement conversation into a strategic one, and to tell senior audiences where they are exposed. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the executive agenda AI and the future of work AI regulation and public policy Competitive advantage in an AI-led economy Industry-specific AI disruption AI risks, dangers, and safety Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and innovation Ideal for Boards and executive committees weighing capital allocation to AI C-suite leaders setting AI strategy, governance, and workforce policy Policy and regulatory audiences confronting AI rules and competition Industry leadership offsites in financial services, technology, healthcare, and professional services Audience outcomes A working mental model of what generative AI can and cannot do, stripped of vendor framing A sharper read on where AI will reshape the workforce and on which timelines A view of the regulatory and geopolitical pressures shaping AI competition Specific questions a board should be asking management about its AI exposure A historical perspective on technology adoption cycles, from someone who has run several

Why organisations work with Jim McKelvey He built the only company on record to beat Amazon in a head-to-head product fight, and turned that experience into a transferable framework leadership teams can apply to their own categories. He sits at the rare intersection of operator and macroeconomic policymaker, currently chairing the board of the St. Louis Fed while still building companies; few speakers can move credibly between Square’s product decisions and the rate environment shaping them. His Innovation Stack thesis gives strategy teams a sharper diagnostic than the standard moat conversation: not what protects your business today, but how many interlocking decisions a rival would need to replicate to dislodge you. He brings a public, named example of how to think about workforce reinvention through LaunchCode, which has placed more than 4,000 non-traditional candidates into technology roles at Mastercard, Boeing and others. Biography highlights Co-founder of Square (now Block, Inc.), launched with Jack Dorsey in 2009; original card reader held in the Museum of Modern Art permanent collection. Author of The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time, Portfolio/Penguin, 2020. Chair of the board of directors, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, designated 2022 and redesignated 2023; Class C Independent Director since 2017. Founder of LaunchCode, a non-profit that has placed over 4,000 people into technology careers across 500-plus hiring partners. Founder and CEO of Invisibly, rebuilding the economics between publishers, readers and data. McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis named in his honour in 2019 following a $15 million gift. Biography Amazon launched a payments product designed to kill Square. It undercut on price, leaned on its scale, and inside a year quietly withdrew. That contest is the substrate of Jim McKelvey’s argument: when a category is genuinely new, single innovations do not protect you. Stacks of them do. The Innovation Stack, published by Portfolio in 2020, formalises what McKelvey lived through as Square’s co-founder. The thesis is that companies which expand markets, rather than capture them, are built from chains of decisions where each new solution forces the next. Competitors who copy one element fail because the system, not the feature, is the moat. It is the working theory boards reach for when they want a sharper alternative to the conventional advantage conversation. McKelvey’s authority on this question is not solely literary. He chairs the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a Class C Independent Director seat held since 2017 and the chair role designated for 2022 and 2023, which gives him a continuous view of the macro environment in which capital and category decisions are made. He also founded LaunchCode, which has placed more than 4,000 people into engineering jobs at firms including Mastercard and Boeing by treating the talent gap as a system problem, not a training one. His current company, Invisibly, is an attempt to rebuild the economic contract between publishers, readers and the platforms that mediate them. Like Square in 2009, it is a wager on a category that does not yet exist in the form it needs to. That is the work McKelvey is recognisably good at, and the work he can teach leadership teams to see in their own organisations. Key speaking topics The Innovation Stack as a strategy framework Category creation versus category capture Defending against larger incumbents Entrepreneurship at scale Workforce reinvention and technology talent Payments, fintech and the economics of money Boards, capital and the macro environment Ideal for CEOs and executive committees rethinking competitive moat Strategy and corporate development leaders evaluating new categories Founders and scale-up leadership teams beyond product-market fit Boards and innovation committees revisiting growth assumptions Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the Innovation Stack and how to map their own organisation’s stack A specific lens for assessing whether a current advantage is replicable or systemic Sharper questions to bring to category bets, M&A targets, and adjacency moves An operator’s account of beating a larger incumbent without matching its resources A clearer view of how monetary and capital conditions shape commercial strategy

Why organisations work with Joanne Lockwood A rare combination of lived experience as a transgender woman and the formal speaker credentials of a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I, which gives leaders both authenticity and confidence in how the message will land in a corporate room. A timely reading of what AI means for people and culture, drawn from two decades running IT businesses and her inclusion practice: how automated hiring, AI-assisted grievances, and an emerging “AI readiness divide” quietly decide who belongs at work and who gets left behind. Practical experience translating inclusion into operational HR practice through SEE Change Happen, the consultancy she founded after exiting a £3m IT services business she had run for two decades. A track record at scale with employers including Levi Strauss, lululemon EMEA, HarperCollins UK, Unilever, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ogilvy, Molson Coors and Wates Group, across retail, professional services, housing and the NHS. A delivery style summarised by her own mantra, Smile, Engage, Educate, that lowers the temperature of difficult conversations and lets senior teams engage with trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion without defensiveness. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, SEE Change Happen, a diversity, inclusion and belonging consultancy specialising in transgender awareness and workplace inclusion. Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I. Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals. First openly transgender National President of Round Table Great Britain and Ireland. Host of the Inclusion Bites podcast and featured subject of the Channel 4 / RDF documentary The Making of Me. Former Trustee of akt, the LGBT+ youth homelessness charity, and volunteer with Beyond Reflections. Biography Most organisations have an inclusion statement. Far fewer have a workforce that knows how to act on it. The gap between published intent and daily behaviour is where culture either compounds or quietly erodes, and it is the space Joanne Lockwood has built her practice around. SEE Change Happen, the consultancy she founded after a career that ran from the Royal Air Force to a £3m IT services business of 25 staff, works with employers to translate DEI policy into the language and habits of line managers. The work is grounded in trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion, where she has personal authority as a transgender woman, and extends into belonging and inclusive recruitment. Clients include Levi Strauss, lululemon EMEA, HarperCollins UK, Unilever, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ogilvy, and Wates Group. Her newest work takes the same lens to artificial intelligence. Drawing on her years running IT businesses, she treats AI as a culture and belonging question rather than a technical one: how automated hiring, AI-assisted grievances, and the gap she calls the “AI readiness divide” decide who gets designed in and who gets left behind. Her framing is blunt. AI does not create culture; it amplifies the culture it enters. Recognition from her own profession reinforces the work. She is a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I and a Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals, and her published thinking runs through the Inclusion Bites podcast and contributions to HRZone, The HRD, and Training Zone. She was the first openly transgender National President of Round Table Great Britain and Ireland, and the subject of Channel 4 and RDF’s documentary The Making of Me. Key speaking topics AI, belonging and the human future of work Inclusive culture and belonging Trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion Inclusive leadership and engagement Workplace allyship Inclusive recruitment and hiring practice Culture change and DEI strategy Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and employee experience leaders rebuilding inclusion practice beyond statements and training modules. Executive teams and boards preparing for substantive conversations on trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion in a contested public climate. Leadership and HR teams working out what AI means for their people, their hiring, and their culture. Talent acquisition and people-team leaders working on inclusive recruitment, onboarding and line-manager capability. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion policy is and is not shaping daily workplace behaviour, and the specific points at which it breaks down. Direct, practical language for trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion that leaders and line managers can use without fear of getting it wrong. A practical way to treat AI as a culture and inclusion issue, including where human judgement has to stay in hiring and employee-relations decisions. A working definition of allyship that goes beyond visible support and into the everyday decisions managers make about hiring, promotion and team culture. Renewed confidence to engage with DEI as a leadership responsibility rather than an HR programme.

Why organisations work with Joe Mull He has a named, defensible framework, Employalty, that reduces engagement to three operating levers (Ideal Job, Meaningful Work, Great Boss) and links each to retention, reputation and revenue. He brings the credibility of running learning and development inside a major US healthcare employer, UPMC Physician Services, so the content lands with operators rather than HR theorists. He is one of fewer than 300 living speakers inducted into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame, a body of work recognised by his peers in 2025. Publishers Weekly named Employalty a top business book of the year, which gives the keynote an evidence base buyers can quote back to their executive team. He owns the manager-as-multiplier argument with specific, repeatable behaviours, not generic “be a better boss” framing, which is what a CHRO actually needs to commission a change programme around. Biography highlights 2025 inductee, Professional Speakers Hall of Fame (CPAE), National Speakers Association. Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), NSA. Author of Employalty, named a top business book of the year by Publishers Weekly. Author of No More Team Drama and Cure for the Common Leader. Former Head of Learning and Development, Physician Services, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). Host of Boss Better Now, ranked among the top management podcasts globally. Named to Global Gurus’ Top 30 Management Speakers list in 2026. Contributor to and featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, and Harvard Business Review. Biography Engagement scores are a lagging measure of something more basic: whether people have a reason to commit. After three years of forced redesign, employees are choosier, quieter and more willing to walk, and the manager layer is where most organisations lose them. That is the territory Joe Mull works in. His Employalty framework, set out in the book Publishers Weekly named a top business book of the year, names three conditions that decide whether an employee commits or coasts: an Ideal Job, Meaningful Work, and a Great Boss. The argument is operational. Each lever maps to a manager behaviour, and each manager behaviour maps to retention, reputation and revenue. Before he was a keynote speaker, Mull ran learning and development for Physician Services at UPMC, one of the largest physician groups in the United States. That history matters. The content was built inside a healthcare employer under real workforce pressure, not derived from survey data, which is why operators tend to leave his sessions with specific things to change on Monday. In 2025 he was inducted into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame, a recognition fewer than 1% of professional speakers receive. His podcast Boss Better Now sits among the most-listened-to management shows, and his commentary appears in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune and Harvard Business Review. The through-line across all of it is the same wager: that the quality of bosses, not the quality of perks, decides whether a workforce stays. Key speaking topics Employee commitment and retention The manager-employee relationship as a business lever Workplace culture in the post-pandemic labour market Team dynamics and workplace conflict Leadership development for frontline and mid-level managers Workforce trends and the changing social contract of work Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders rebuilding retention and engagement strategy Heads of learning and development designing manager capability programmes Healthcare, hospitality, professional services and other high-turnover sectors CEO and executive offsites where culture and people strategy are on the agenda Audience outcomes A shared language for what actually drives commitment at work, anchored in the Employalty framework A clear read on where the manager layer is creating or destroying retention Specific behaviours managers can adopt to lift discretionary effort A sharper view of the trade-offs between engagement spend and manager capability investment Practical tools for addressing team drama, gossip and the conflict patterns that drain culture

Why organisations work with Joe Toscano He left Google over the data practices he saw inside it, then wrote the book on what those practices look like from within. That insider account is hard to replicate at the keynote level. His work translates AI and privacy debates into specific operating decisions: what data to keep, what to delete, what to disclose, and where consent breaks under regulatory scrutiny. As founder of DataGrade and BEACON, he speaks from the position of someone running a privacy-first business, not commenting on one from outside. His public visibility through The Social Dilemma, Fox News, and Forbes means he can hold a non-technical audience on a technical subject without dropping the substance. Biography highlights Featured expert in Netflix’s The Social Dilemma. Author of Automating Humanity (powerHouse Books / Simon & Schuster). Founder and CEO of DataGrade. Founder of the Better Ethics and Consumer Outcomes Network (BEACON). Former Experience Design consultant for Google. TEDx speaker; Forbes contributor; recurring Fox News technology commentator. Biography The companies setting the rules for how consumer data trains AI systems are also the companies whose products most depend on that data. That conflict sits at the centre of Joe Toscano’s work. He came out of Silicon Valley with a designer’s view of how those products are built, then turned that knowledge outward. Toscano was an Experience Design consultant for Google before stepping away in 2017 over what he saw of the industry’s data practices. Automating Humanity, his book with powerHouse Books, set out the argument in detail: how attention is engineered, how disinformation pays, and how automation is being trained on data the public never knowingly handed over. He went on to found DataGrade, a privacy-first data company, and BEACON, a network focused on technology literacy and ethical innovation. The Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma brought that work to a mass audience, and he has since become a regular technology commentator on Fox News and a contributor to Forbes. What makes him useful to boards is the combination of inside knowledge and operating responsibility. He is not theorising about AI governance from a lectern. He is building a company that has to make those decisions every day, and translating that into language a non-technical executive team can act on. Key speaking topics AI ethics and governance Data privacy and consumer trust The business case for privacy-first design Technology literacy for non-technical leaders The future of work under AI and automation Disinformation and platform accountability Regulation and the post-GDPR landscape Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI and data governance standards Chief Privacy Officers, CISOs, and Chief Data Officers CMOs and customer experience leaders weighing personalisation against privacy HR and transformation leads planning workforce change driven by AI Audience outcomes A clearer line between defensible and indefensible uses of customer data in AI systems Specific questions a board should be asking about model training data and consent A working view of how privacy can be a commercial advantage, not just a compliance cost Sharper judgement about what to believe and discount in vendor pitches on AI capability

Why organisations work with Johnny C Taylor Jr He speaks for the formal voice of the global HR profession. SHRM represents nearly 340,000 members influencing more than 362 million workers, which gives his read on workforce trends institutional weight no individual consultant can claim. His book RESET gives executives a structured argument for treating talent, culture, and inclusion as the primary commercial constraint, not technology or capital. He has testified to Congress on workforce policy and chaired the President’s Advisory Board on HBCUs, so he can frame people decisions inside the actual policy and regulatory weather boards are operating in. He writes USA Today’s weekly “Ask HR” column and co-hosts The Work Wire podcast, which keeps his content tested against real questions from working managers, not theory. He has run the talent function at large operating companies including Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster, IAC, and Compass Group, so the perspective is operator-grounded, not academic. Biography highlights President and CEO of SHRM, the largest HR professional body in the world, with members in 180 countries. Author of RESET: A Leader’s Guide to Work in an Age of Upheaval, a Wall Street Journal and national bestseller. Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources; named Distinguished Executive of the Year by the Academy of Management. Former CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund; chaired the President’s Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Board director at XPO, Inc. (NYSE: XPO), Guild Education, and Flores HR; Vice Chair, University of Miami Board of Trustees. USA Today columnist on workplace questions; co-host of The Work Wire podcast. Biography The workforce that most boards still describe is the workforce they had in 2019. The one they actually employ has been remade by remote work, AI deployment, five generations on the org chart, and political tension that now arrives at the office door. SHRM’s research, and the questions arriving in Taylor’s USA Today column every week, point at the same gap. Taylor leads SHRM, the global professional body for human resources, with nearly 340,000 members across 180 countries. The seat gives him a working dataset of how organisations of every size are responding to AI adoption, hybrid work, talent scarcity, and contested cultural questions. RESET, his 2021 Wall Street Journal bestseller, made the central argument plainly: the binding constraint on most companies is not capital or technology, it is whether they can find, hire, and engage the people who can use either one. That argument is unusual because it comes from an operator. Before SHRM he was CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and held senior HR and legal roles at Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster, IAC, and Compass Group USA. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources, holds a JD and MA from Drake University, and is admitted to the bar in Florida, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. He has testified to Congress on sexual harassment, paid leave, and workforce development, chaired the President’s Advisory Board on HBCUs, and serves on the boards of XPO, Guild Education, and Flores HR. The Academy of Management named him Distinguished Executive of the Year in 2020. For senior teams trying to run a credible people strategy in front of a board that wants commercial answers, that combination of practitioner authority, policy access, and published thesis is hard to assemble from any other speaker on the topic. Key speaking topics Future of work Talent acquisition and retention Workplace civility and culture AI and the human workforce Workforce policy and regulation Inclusion in a contested political climate Multigenerational workforce dynamics Employee engagement and the social contract of work Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leadership wrestling with talent, engagement, and culture as board-level metrics. CEOs and boards of directors recalibrating workforce strategy around AI, hybrid models, and inclusion. Industry associations and member events convening HR, legal, and operations leaders. Executive offsites and town halls where the people agenda is the central commercial question. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which workforce shifts are temporary and which are structural. A defensible case for treating culture, civility, and engagement as commercial inputs, with evidence drawn from SHRM’s member data. A sharper read on how policy, regulation, and political climate will shape people decisions over the next 12 to 24 months. Practical positions on AI adoption, hybrid work, and inclusion that can survive contact with a sceptical board. A vocabulary for talking about talent that aligns HR, finance, and the C-suite around the same problem.