Send them home with a compass
Keynote speaking for conferences and events
Most conference keynotes are enjoyed and forgotten. The ones that last give an audience a new way of seeing something they already care about, and one idea they're still turning over on the drive home.
Three keynotes
I speak on leadership through the lens of Japanese philosophy and twenty years leading across Asia, the Americas and Europe. Warm, direct, grounded in real stories rather than theory, and always built around your audience and what you want them to leave with.
SIGNATURE KEYNOTE
Find your compass: Leading through uncertainty with kokoro
There's a moment most leaders recognise, when the playbook stops working and the path forward isn't clear. Most advice says think harder or move faster. This keynote offers something different: a compass. Drawing on a childhood shaped by displacement, a long connection to Japan, and two decades leading across cultures, it introduces the eight directions of the Kokoro Compass and what they make possible when certainty runs out.
Audiences leave with a way to think about uncertainty as a path to navigate rather than a problem to solve, the eight directions and how to use them, and one practice to take into the week ahead.
Best for: leadership summits, transformation events, in-house leadership days, women in leadership.
RESILIENCE KEYNOTE
The gold in the cracks: A kintsugi approach to leadership
Kintsugi is the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with gold - the break becomes part of the object's history rather than something to hide. Most leaders have been through something hard: a restructure, a failure, a role that cost more than it gave. This keynote reframes those experiences not as scars to manage but as a genuine source of leadership strength, and makes the case that the most credible leaders aren't the ones who avoided the breaks.
Audiences leave with a different relationship to their own setbacks, a framework for turning difficult experience into leadership capability, and language to help their teams grow through challenge.
Best for: change and transformation, wellbeing and mental health, women in leadership, post-restructure events.
FUTURE OF LEADERSHIP KEYNOTE
The human edge: Leading with kokoro in the age of AI
I'm written a book about the irreplaceable human qualities of leadership. I'm also co-founder of an AI startup. That tension isn't a contradiction - it's the point. AI is coming for the mechanical work of leadership: the reporting, the scheduling, the processing. What it can't replicate is kokoro - the presence, empathy and judgement that make people feel genuinely led. This keynote argues that the leaders who thrive won't be the ones who resist AI or defer to it, but the ones who use it to free up space for the most human work of all.
Audiences leave with a clear view of what AI will and won't change about leadership, the human capabilities that can't be automated, and a practical way to use AI to lead more humanly rather than just more efficiently.
Best for: Technology and AI, future of work, HR and people and culture, innovation and transformation events.
Delivery formats
Half a day is the standard shape and the one I recommend - enough time for the conversation to get honest. Shorter conference and offsite versions work well where the session sits inside a wider agenda. Bespoke workshops on other leadership themes can also be designed on request.
What’s included
Case study · National HR Summit · Conference keynote
A national HR and people summit wanted a keynote on leading across cultures, for an audience of people and culture professionals working in organisations spread across multiple countries and cultural contexts, where standard leadership advice was proving too generic to be useful.
Challenge
A keynote built on real experience rather than cultural frameworks, drawn from leading teams across Asia during a period when nobody had answers, including the moment of admitting that to a team of thousands. Practical rather than theoretical, with specific language and behaviours the audience could apply immediately in their own organisations.
Approach
Strong audience response and follow-on conversations with attendees about bringing the work into their own organisations. The session material has since informed both in-house leadership programmes and the thinking behind Lead with Kokoro.
Outcome
Looking for a speaker?
Tell me about your event, your audience and what you want them to leave with. Every keynote is tailored to the event and I'll send through a speaker kit so you have everything you need.
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Every week, a quiet moment to pause and think about what leadership really asks of us.
I share a direction of the compass and ideas drawn from Japanese philosophy, stories from my coaching work, and the small practices that make the biggest difference.