Ross Reekie
Workforces have stopped believing in the mission. Engagement scores hold, but discretionary energy is gone, and the usual playbook of values posters and recognition programmes no longer moves the dial. The harder question is what people are actually committing to, and what leaders have to do differently to make that commitment real.
Ross Reekie is a meaningful-work researcher and consultant who helps organisations repair the gap between stated purpose and the daily experience of work.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Ross Reekie
- He brings primary research material that most engagement speakers do not have: the Fun Jobs Project is a multi-year field experiment in which he personally took on roles from ski instructor to stand-up comedian to test where meaning actually originates at work.
- He treats meaning as a performance variable, not a wellbeing variable. The argument lands with operating leaders who have stopped believing engagement programmes pay back.
- His academic base is serious. An Engineering degree from Edinburgh, an MBA and a Master’s in Sustainable Leadership from MGSM Sydney, and PhD-track research at Macquarie give him a credible research spine to sit alongside the field work.
- He is built for interactive formats. His keynote uses live experiments, props and audience participation rather than slide narration, which suits internal leadership offsites and culture-launch events.
- He has tested the same content across two continents and across sectors, with named conference platforms including TEDxMonashUniversity, TEDxGlasgowCaledonianUniversity, and the Urban Future Global Conference.
Biography highlights
- Founder of Rise Consulting, Sydney, working with leadership teams on meaningful work and workplace culture.
- TEDx speaker at TEDxMonashUniversity (2019) and TEDxGlasgowCaledonianUniversity (2019).
- Creator of the Fun Jobs Project, a live research experiment into the sources of meaning at work.
- Host of The Meaning of Work podcast, with hundreds of interviews from interns to chief executives.
- MBA and Master’s in Sustainable Leadership from MGSM Sydney; Engineering degree from the University of Edinburgh; Master’s in Research underway at Macquarie University.
- Twenty years of consulting work with leadership teams across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia.
Biography
Most organisations have stopped believing their own engagement data. Scores hold steady, but discretionary effort drains away, and the standard interventions of values workshops, recognition platforms and mission refreshes no longer change behaviour. The interesting question is no longer whether people are engaged. It is what they are committing to, and why.
Ross Reekie has spent two decades inside that question. He founded Rise Consulting in Sydney to work with leadership teams on meaningful work and workplace culture, building on twenty years of consulting across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. His academic base sits alongside the practice: an Engineering degree from the University of Edinburgh, an MBA and a Master’s in Sustainable Leadership from MGSM Sydney, and Master’s research at Macquarie University on what makes work matter.
The Fun Jobs Project is what sets the work apart. After burning out as the meaningful-work expert who had lost meaning in his own work, Reekie ran a live experiment on himself, taking roles from ski instructor to stand-up comedian to opera extra to test where engagement actually comes from. The output is a model of meaning that starts with a playful, exploratory mindset rather than with mission statements, and that treats curiosity and connection as performance inputs.
He brings the same material to TEDx stages at Monash and Glasgow Caledonian, to the Urban Future Global Conference, and to private leadership rooms. His keynote runs as a live, interactive session rather than a talk, with props and audience experiments built in. For a senior people or transformation leader trying to revive a tired culture, he gives them a research-grounded argument they can hand to an operating board.
Key speaking topics
- Meaningful work and workplace culture
- Employee engagement and the social contract of work
- Purpose and authenticity in leadership
- Burnout and recovery in senior teams
- Belonging and team connection
- Fear as a performance blocker
- Playful curiosity as a leadership capability
Ideal for
- CHROs and chief people officers rebuilding engagement after a period of flat scores or fatigued change programmes
- Heads of culture and internal communications launching or refreshing a purpose narrative
- Leadership teams and executive offsites looking for a working session rather than a talk
- Conference organisers in the future-of-work, employee experience, and urban or civic-leadership space
Audience outcomes
- A research-grounded view of why meaning at work is a performance question, not a wellbeing question
- A clear distinction between engagement programmes that move behaviour and those that do not
- Specific language for the mindset shifts that produce more discretionary commitment at work
- Practical prompts for leaders to test on their own teams before changing anything organisation-wide
- A felt experience of a working session, not a lecture, that participants can replicate in their own offsites
Talks
An interactive keynote that translates the Fun Jobs Project research into the practical leadership moves that revive engagement and discretionary effort.
Key takeaways:
- Where meaning at work actually originates, and why mission statements rarely create it
- The mindset and behavioural shifts that separate engaged teams from compliant ones
- How leaders can model curiosity and serious fun without losing operating discipline
A keynote on authenticity as a working practice for senior leaders, drawing on the Fun Jobs Project material.
Key takeaways:
- What authentic leadership looks like when stripped of performance language
- How to find the work, inside any role, that connects to personal purpose
- The leadership cost of inauthenticity, including its effect on team trust
A keynote on the leadership work required to turn an organisation chart into a connected team.
Key takeaways:
- The specific behaviours that signal belonging in a team setting
- How leaders unintentionally suppress connection through everyday habits
- Practical ways to rebuild connection in hybrid and distributed teams
A keynote on the role of fear in suppressing performance, creativity, and honest dialogue at work.
Key takeaways:
- How fear shows up at senior level as perfectionism, control, or silence
- The cost of unspoken fear on team decisions and innovation
- Tools leaders can use to surface and reduce fear inside their own teams