Keynote Speakers

Shawn Kanungo

Innovation Strategist & Best-Selling Author
Canada
As a globally recognized innovation strategist and bestselling author, Shawn Kanungo works at the intersection of creativity, business, and technology. He spent 12 years at Deloitte working closely with leaders to help them better plan for the opportunities associated with disruptive innovation. In his high energy keynotes, Kanungo draws on his extensive experience to provide audiences with an optimistic roadmap for the future; one that embraces unexpected approaches to innovation to remain competitive and relevant. Since leaving Deloitte, Kanungo has worked with hundreds of organizations on their journey to digital transformation. He’s led complex projects incorporating artificial intelligence, cloud technologies, behavioural economics, Web3, and more. Today, Kanungo is a Partner with Queen & Rook, where he advises leading organizations and executives on disruptive trends and invests in early-stage ventures. Kanungo is the first innovation expert to have a streaming special, released on Apple TV and Prime Video in August 2023. It complements and shares the name of his bestselling debut book, The Bold Ones, a playbook for individuals to become bolder and push their careers and organizations forward. It has been touted as one of McKinsey’s top decision-making books for leaders. Kanungo’s work has also been featured in the Globe and Mail, The Guardian, CBC, and CTV. A prolific content creator, Kanungo’s content on innovation has garnered millions of views across LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook. He’s been recognized by Edify magazine as one of their “Top 40 Under 40” and was called the “best virtual keynote speaker I’ve ever seen” by Forbes in 2021.
Strategy in a World of Disruption
Key Insights

The business world has fundamentally changed forever. The growth and adoption of new technologies is at a dizzying pace. Customer and employee expectations have been pushed forward 10 years due to the pandemic. We are now looking for organizations to be fearless in a changing world.

These drivers are forcing everyone to reimagine their entire organizations. How do we survive? How do we disrupt ourselves before someone else does? How do we deliver better experiences to our clients, customers, and teams? Today, we need to be bold, brave, and experimental.

In this awe-inspiring talk, Shawn Kanungo provides an optimistic roadmap for the future. He explores how we can take unexpected approaches to innovation to remain competitive and relevant.

Date
Monday, 22 July

Erica Dhawan

Award-Winning Keynote Speaker and Author
USA

When leaders want to break team silos, drive exponential growth and innovate through teamwork, they call Erica Dhawan.

Erica Dhawan is an internationally recognized leading authority, speaker and advisor on 21st century teamwork, collaboration and innovation. Named as one of the top 50 management thinkers in the world byThinkers50, she is the author of two bestselling books, Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence and Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance. As we continue to experience an increasingly digital world where work practices are changing at a blistering pace, Erica shares innovative strategies to unlock the collective power of teams, build a culture of trust across any distance and create authentic engagement to ensure competitiveness. Rated #1 on the Top Women Keynote Speakers list, Erica frequently appears in the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and The Wall Street Journal. Erica speaks on global stages ranging from the World Economic Forum at Davos, to the US Army, to companies such as Coca-Cola, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, and Cisco. She holds degrees from Harvard University, MIT Sloan, and The Wharton School.

Concrete Empathy: A Playbook for Leading Modern Teams to Innovation
Key Insights

We live in a culture defined by a distinct empathy deficit: The boss who expresses displeasure without giving valuable feedback. The mansplaining colleague who has no interest in the opinions of others. The team member who spends most of the meeting texting and answering emails.

Why is empathy today at such a low point? Fewer face-to-face interactions, an ever-accelerating pace of change, and an increasing number of matrixed teams working remotely.

In this keynote, attendees will learn practical ways to activate Concrete Empathy to create cultures of psychological safety, employee engagement, well-being, and innovation.      

Learning Outcomes:

• Discover simple ways to signal understanding and empathy across differences and distance
• Learn rules of thumb to avoid misunderstanding, ambiguity, and conflict
• Gain tools to foster innovation and create lasting relationships both within your organization and with clients, customers, and other key stakeholders

Date
Wednesday, 24 July
Time
10:30 am - 12:00 pm