Nick Jankel
Senior leaders are asked to lead change, AI transition, and transformation continuously, often while still recovering from the last cycle. Most leadership development equips them analytically and leaves the harder part untouched: under pressure, the brain protects rather than adapts. The gap between leaders who can articulate the change and leaders who can land it is a human biology problem, not a strategy problem.
Nick Jankel works with senior executives and leadership teams to build the human capability behind change, AI transition, and transformation, drawing on the neuroscience-based Bio-Transformation® (BTX) methodology he developed at Switch On Leadership.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Nick Jankel
- He works with senior executives as a peer rather than an outsider. His position lets him challenge leadership teams in the room and stay engaged across the programmes that follow, which is the difference between a keynote that lands and a keynote that fades by the next quarter.
- Bio-Transformation® (BTX®) is one of the few leadership frameworks built from medical science and philosophy of science rather than consulting practice. The argument that change fails when leaders apply machine logic to living systems is a defensible intellectual position, not a packaging exercise.
- His Cambridge Triple First in Medicine and Philosophy of Science, combined with twenty-five years applying the framework inside organisations, gives senior leaders a rare combination: a scientist’s argument about human behaviour and a practitioner’s instinct for what works in the room.
- Across roughly 250 executive leadership and transformation programmes for organisations including Unilever, Microsoft, HSBC, LEGO, Genentech, NHS, and Intel, the methodology has shaped the development of approximately 100,000 senior leaders and executives.
- His keynotes are designed as interventions: customised, experiential, and built to move leaders toward leading change, AI transition, or transformation, rather than simply describing why it matters.
Biography highlights
- Cambridge Triple First (summa cum laude) in Medicine and Philosophy of Science; clinical medicine at UCL
- Co-founder and CEO of Switch On Leadership, designer of executive leadership and transformation programmes for organisations including Unilever, Microsoft, HSBC, LEGO, Genentech, NHS, and Intel
- Creator of the Bio-Transformation® (BTX) methodology, a neuroscience-based framework for individual, team, and organisational change
- Roughly 250 executive leadership development and transformation programmes designed and delivered, shaping the development of approximately 100,000 senior leaders and executives
- Author of multiple books on leadership and transformation, including Now Lead the Change (2020) and Switch On (2014); work translated into Chinese
- Lectured at Yale, Oxford, London Business School, Sciences Po, and UC Berkeley; media coverage in the Financial Times, The Times, The Economist, and The Guardian
- Transformation coach on BBC and MTV television series; spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Talks@Google, and The Economist Summit
Biography
Most senior leaders are now asked to lead change, AI transition, and transformation in parallel, often without the time to recover between cycles. The standard answer is to equip them with better strategy. The harder answer, and the one Nick Jankel has spent twenty-five years working on, is that under pressure most leaders default to protecting rather than adapting, and no amount of strategic clarity rewrites that biology.
Jankel arrived at this argument by an unusual route. He studied medicine and philosophy of science at Cambridge, graduating with a Triple First, before training in clinical medicine at UCL. He then moved into brand strategy at TBWA/Chiat Day on accounts including PlayStation and Nike. Bio-Transformation® (BTX®), the methodology he later built, draws on all three: a clinician’s view of human systems, a philosopher’s account of how knowledge changes under pressure, and a practitioner’s understanding of how people actually choose.
As co-founder of Switch On Leadership, Jankel applies BTX through senior executive interventions, leadership team development, and enterprise-wide programmes for organisations including Unilever, Microsoft, HSBC, LEGO, Genentech, NHS, and Intel. Roughly 250 programmes and 100,000 leaders have been built around the methodology to date. He has explored the underlying ideas in books including Now Lead the Change (2020) and Switch On (2014), and lectured at Yale, Oxford, London Business School, Sciences Po, and UC Berkeley.
What separates his keynote work is the deliberate refusal to treat the keynote as a speech. The session is designed as an intervention, customised to a leadership group’s actual change agenda and built to move people, not only inform them. The Financial Times, The Times, The Economist, and The Guardian have covered his work; he has spoken at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Talks@Google, and The Economist Summit, and hosted transformation-focused series for the BBC and MTV.
Key speaking topics
- Executive leadership development under pressure
- Leading change, AI transition, and transformation
- Neuroscience of organisational change and human adaptation
- Adaptive leadership and senior team capability
- Leadership for the age of generative AI
- Bio-Transformation® methodology and applied complexity science
Ideal for
- C-suite and senior leadership teams leading transformation, AI transition, or large-scale organisational change
- CHROs and Chief Learning Officers commissioning executive leadership development programmes at top-50, top-100, or top-500 leader scale
- Boards and executive committees seeking a science-backed perspective on why standard leadership development underdelivers in conditions of sustained pressure
- Innovation, transformation, and AI leads in regulated or complex sectors including pharma, financial services, and government
Audience outcomes
- Senior leaders leave with a working understanding of why their organisation’s last change programme stalled at the human level, framed through the Control-and-Protect vs Create-and-Connect distinction at the heart of BTX®
- Practical tools for regulating stress responses and shifting leadership defaults under live pressure, applicable inside the room and after the event
- A shared language for naming the human dynamics of change at senior team level, so the work continues without him
- A clearer view of what generative AI specifically asks of leaders, distinct from what it asks of technology functions
- Visible movement, not only information: the session is designed to leave leaders ready to lead the next phase of change, not only to think about it
Talks
A keynote that equips leaders with seven neuroscience-informed principles for reframing disruption, regulating stress responses, and combining analytical data with intuition under conditions of peak complexity.
Key takeaways:
- How the brain processes uncertainty and why standard leadership responses tend to make it worse
- Seven practical principles for staying grounded, clear, and creative when conventional logic runs out
- Techniques for combining data-driven analysis with intuitive judgment in high-stakes decisions
A keynote introducing the METTA Mindset framework – Malleability, Empathy, Transformation, Tetheredness, and Adaptivity – as a direct response to the brittle, anxious, and nonlinear conditions defining today’s operating environment.
Key takeaways:
- Why the VUCA model no longer captures the full complexity leaders are navigating, and what BANI adds
- How to recognize and interrupt defensive, stress-driven leadership patterns before they block adaptation
- How to apply METTA as a practical leadership orientation in real organizational decisions
A keynote outlining a seven-step pathway for leading and embedding transformational innovation, building cultures that support experimentation rather than protecting established models.
Key takeaways:
- The distinction between incremental optimization and the kind of transformational innovation that changes business models
- A seven-step process for leading and landing innovation programs inside real organizations
- The cultural and behavioral conditions that separate organizations that experiment from those that only plan to