Niluka Kavanagh
Most organisations have moved quickly on AI and far more slowly on what it means for their people. The technology has budgets and owners; the human side, which still drives innovation, performance, retention, and engagement, does not. As automation absorbs more of the work, that gap becomes the real constraint on how organisations grow.
As AI takes on more of the work, Niluka Kavanagh, co-founder of KPMG’s Behavioural Science Unit and creator of The Modern CEO framework, helps leadership teams keep people at the centre of how their organisations grow and perform.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Niluka Kavanagh
- She co-founded KPMG’s Behavioural Science Unit, giving her a practitioner’s understanding of how psychological insight can be embedded in organisational design: not cited in a presentation, but built into real structures inside a global firm.
- The KPMG FutureThinkers initiative she co-founded, convening speakers from the BBC, HSBC, and others, gives her direct insight into how large organisations signal innovation internally, and where those signals fall short.
- Through The Modern CEO, her leadership framework for organisations, she takes the multigenerational engagement debate out of HR theory and into the specifics of daily leadership communication, psychological safety, and behavioural design across teams.
- She has operated inside large organisations and built independent businesses, so she can speak to the intrapreneurship and autonomy conversation from both sides of the corporate boundary.
- Operating experience across fourteen countries, with a community of more than a thousand independent founders behind her, gives her a working understanding of what trust, engagement, and team performance look like when conventional structures of co-location and hierarchy do not apply.
Biography highlights
- Opened the 2026 Learning Technologies conference programme on the human side of the future of work, at Europe’s largest workplace learning event
- Co-founded KPMG’s Behavioural Science Unit and the KPMG FutureThinkers initiative during nearly five years as a consultant and project lead at the firm
- Advised organisations including Mastercard, Tesco, the London Stock Exchange Group, and Lloyds Bank
- Published in The World Financial Review on the application of behavioural science to customer experience design, and featured in MSN’s “Top 10 Leading Speakers to Follow” (2025)
- Member of the UN Innovation Network (UNIN)
- Graduate of the University of Oxford (English, Somerville College) and an Alumni Ambassador for the college; has guest lectured at Trinity College Dublin and the University of Edinburgh
- Founder of ImagineThat, a global community for entrepreneurs with more than 1,000 members across multiple countries
Biography
Most organisations still use presence as a proxy for productivity and hierarchy as a proxy for trust. Neither assumption holds for the workforce that is now entering and increasingly leaving corporate life. Niluka Kavanagh’s work sits precisely at that fault line: the widening gap between how organisations are designed and what the people inside them now expect.
Her grounding in this is practical. At KPMG, she spent nearly five years consulting for organisations including Mastercard, Tesco, and the London Stock Exchange Group, co-founding both the firm’s Behavioural Science Unit and its FutureThinkers initiative. Both projects were about the same thing: applying psychological and behavioural insight to how organisations lead change, design experiences, and engage the people doing the work.
She now takes that thinking to the stage. In 2026 she opened the Learning Technologies conference, Europe’s largest workplace learning event, on the human side of the future of work, and she is a member of the UN Innovation Network. Her writing on behavioural science and customer experience has appeared in The World Financial Review.
That work rests on an unusual operating base. Three businesses, fourteen countries of operating experience, and a community of more than a thousand independent founders gave her the empirical foundation for The Modern CEO, a leadership framework focused on engagement, communication, psychological safety, and intrapreneurship across multigenerational teams. She works with senior leaders to move organisations beyond outdated management models towards cultures built on clarity, trust, and sustainable performance.
Key speaking topics
- Future of work and workforce transformation
- The Modern CEO framework for multigenerational leadership
- Behavioural science in organisational design
- Multigenerational leadership and team engagement
- Intrapreneurship and internal innovation
- Human-centric leadership and trust structures
- Leadership communication and psychological safety
Ideal for
- CHROs and people leaders managing generational shifts in workforce expectation and culture
- CEOs and senior leadership teams seeking to align organisational structure with modern ways of working
- Transformation leads and change teams working on culture, engagement, and talent retention
- Professional services and entrepreneurial firms navigating the shift to more autonomous, distributed, or flexible operating models
Audience outcomes
- A working understanding of how generational values are reshaping expectations around autonomy, leadership, and work design, and where the organisational cost is already showing up
- The Modern CEO framework as a practical model for engagement, intrapreneurship, communication, and psychological safety across multigenerational teams
- Concrete approaches to unlocking intrapreneurial thinking in teams, drawn from real experience building innovation initiatives inside a global consultancy
- A clearer sense of how behavioural science applies to culture and leadership challenges beyond the theoretical, grounded in organisational practice
- Practical questions to apply to their own organisation’s structure, communication norms, and talent strategy
Talks
The future-of-work conversation is increasingly dominated by AI, automation, and learning platforms. The harder question is what meaningful, engaging work looks like for the people doing it, and how leadership, communication, and behavioural insight shape whether the technology investment translates into engagement and performance.
Key takeaways:
- Why even the most advanced learning and technology strategies fall flat without attention to the human dynamics around them
- How leadership behaviour, not title or role, shapes engagement, curiosity, and continued development at work
- The behavioural mechanics behind motivation, trust, and high-performing cultures in a workforce with shifting expectations
A framework for activating entrepreneurial thinking inside existing organisations, drawing on Kavanagh’s direct experience co-founding the KPMG Behavioural Science Unit and running innovation initiatives within a global firm.
Key takeaways:
- How intrapreneurial thinking drives ownership, creativity, and initiative in teams
- How to identify and activate underused talent without restructuring
- The cultural conditions that make internal innovation possible – and what blocks it
An introduction to the “nomadic mindset” framework – a model for cultural agility, empathy, and adaptive communication in workplaces shaped by AI, hybrid working, and generational change.
Key takeaways:
- What the nomadic mindset is and how it applies to leadership and team dynamics
- How adaptability and empathy function as practical leadership tools, not just values
- Approaches for building cultural agility and connection across distributed or multigenerational teams
An examination of the values, expectations, and communication styles of younger generations, and what those differences require from leadership practice.
Key takeaways:
- Where conventional leadership approaches fail to engage younger employees
- The specific expectations – around autonomy, purpose, and communication – that most leaders underestimate
- Practical changes to leadership style and team structure that improve engagement and retention
An exploration of how leadership must evolve in response to remote work, AI, and shifting generational values – with a focus on the structural conditions that make people want to stay.
Key takeaways:
- Why top-down leadership models are losing effectiveness across multiple dimensions
- The role of trust and autonomy in designing cultures that retain high performers
- How communication structures and work design shape engagement at the team level