One of the world’s most admired athletes and the most decorated Olympian of all time, Phelps competed in his first Olympic Games at the age of 15. He has a total of 28 medals, 23 of which are gold. He is the first American male swimmer to earn a spot on five Olympic teams and at the 2016 Olympic Games, he became the oldest individual gold medalist in Olympic swimming history.

In 2008 Phelps created the Michael Phelps Foundation and in 2010, in collaboration with the Michael Phelps Swim School and KidsHealth.org, developed the “im” program that teaches children the importance of being active and healthy, focusing on the sport of swimming. Since retiring from competitive swimming, Phelps has also been actively involved in mental health awareness and promotion.

Sustaining High Performance

• Insights on goal setting and the mindset necessary to prepare for success
• Facing failure and self-doubt: Lessons learnt from when times were toughest
• Staying motivated: Developing the desire to keep setting the bar higher year after year
• The importance of raising awareness around mental health and personal wellbeing to sustain high performance

Guy Kawasaki is a seasoned professional in Silicon Valley, having worked at both Apple and Google. With over thirty years of experience, he specializes in creating innovative products and services and bringing them to market successfully. Currently, Kawasaki holds the position of Chief Evangelist at Canva, an online graphic design tool. Formerly serving as Chief Evangelist at Apple and as a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, he is also a prolific author, having written 16 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Art of The Start e Enchantment. 

Additionally, Kawasaki serves as an executive fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and he is adjunct professor of the University of New South Wales. He also hosts the podcast Remarkable People.

A former senior robotics researcher and Mars Exploration research engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ayanna Howard is the current Dean of Engineering at The Ohio State University.   She is the co-founder and board director of Zyrobotics, a STEM education and therapy company that designs products for children with special needs. Foremost authority on human emotion-centered robotic design, her work and accomplishments have been the subject of numerous articles and profiles, including in Time, USA Today and Black Enterprise.  Howard is also the author of the best-selling audiobook Sex, Race, and Robots: How to Be Human in the Age of AI.

Make AI Work For Your Business

• How AI and robotics will define the future of businesses across industries: An optimistic approach
• Understanding and mitigating the unintended consequences and ethical challenges of AI
• Leveraging AI for human-centered innovation: Strategies for enhancing productivity and connection
• Diverse teams in AI development: Keys to creating inclusive products

For more than two decades as All Blacks Manager, Darren was the driving force behind creating and maintaining the culture that shaped the New Zealand All Blacks into the world’s most successful international sports team. His focus was on building the ‘team around the team’ and creating an environment that wholeheartedly supported peak performance. During his tenure, the All Blacks achieved a winning percentage of 76.77% across more than 600 test matches, a record unrivaled in world sport, and also won the Tri Nations and subsequent Rugby Championship six times, among other achievements.

Since retiring from that position, Shand has founded Winning Teams, a consultancy that shares key lessons in leadership and how to build a winning culture based on his experience leading from inside the world’s most acclaimed sports team.

Winning Teams: Cultivating Talent and Elevating Collective Potential
Lessons from a Master Team Manager for Building Winning Teams

• How to create a tailored approach to team dynamics for optimal performance
• Understanding the significance of compatibility and shared values in team selection
• Strategies for fostering a supportive and collaborative environment within teams
• The role of human dynamics in shaping resilient and talent

Globally recognized expert in customer experience and AI at MIT Sloan

A globally-recognized thinker on how AI affects human judgment, Renée Richardson Gosline is an award-winning Research Scientist and Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the head of the Human-First AI group at MIT’s Initiative on The Digital Economy. Named a Digital Fellow at Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab, Gosline has also been recognized as one of the World’s Top 40 Professors under 40 by Poets and Quants, and as “one of the brightest minds in AI” by Inc. Magazine in 2024. Her research specializes in AI CX strategy, creating a culture of experimentation, and Responsible AI.  She is the author of the forthcoming book, In Praise of Friction.

Human-Centered AI for a Breakthrough Customer Experience

• Key principles of a successful customer experience strategy: Balancing data-driven insights with human emotion
• Finding the friction sweet spot: Why friction can be good and how to harness its power for a seamless customer journey
• Ethical AI and inclusive leadership: Strategies to craft unbiased, customer-centric experiences that resonate with all clients
• Cultivating a culture of innovation through behavioral science and human-centered AI
  

Authority on Psychological Safety at Harvard Business School

A renowned expert on organisational learning and leadership and the world’s #1 ranked management thinker, Amy Edmondson has been studying psychological safety and workplace behaviours for more than 20 years.  The Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, Edmondson helps organisations identify barriers to success that are often hidden inside a workplace culture. Her work has helped major firms vastly improve performance by building an environment of psychological safety, transparency and collaborative teaming. She is the bestselling author of The Fearless Organization, and the recently published Right Kind of Wrong, which won the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2023. 

Psychological Safety: Unlocking Growth Through Intelligent Failure

• How to nurture an environment where employees feel safe and empowered
• Improve learning, cooperation and performance by fostering a culture of psychological safety
• How leaders can transform their perspective on setbacks by embracing the intelligent failures that are vital to innovation
• Tailored practices, skills and mindsets for taking smart risks and using mistakes as springboards for profound learning and competitive differentiation

A visionary leader and serial entrepreneur, Jon McNeill teaches organizations how to exponentially scale businesses and drive disruptive innovation. As former President of Tesla, he oversaw a 10-fold increase in sales from $2 billion to $20 billion in just three years. In 2018, he became COO at ride-hailing app Lyft, where he helped prepare the company to go public, growing revenue from $800 million to $2 billion in the process. 

Currently, McNeill is a Managing Director at DVx Ventures, a growth-stage venture platform, and serves on several boards of companies including General Motors, Lululemon and Stash Financial.

Lessons on Transformation and Growth from Inside Tesla

• Disruption, transformation and the Tesla case: The electric car everyone is watching
• Sleeping in the Tesla factory: Experiences and lessons learned with Elon Musk
• How to generate a culture of trust and accountability among employees
• Detecting and promoting disruptive and transformative ideas within your organisation: How to create an idea’s factory

A leading expert in strategy, digital transformation, and customer experience, Peter Wilton empowers organisations to maintain their relevance and leadership in rapidly evolving markets. Drawing on first-hand industry experience, Wilton has developed a portfolio of frameworks and methodologies for implementing integrated innovation strategies, redefining customer value, and uncovering opportunities to enhance customer loyalty. Formally educated as a marketer and psychometrician, Wilton is also a Marketing Professor at UC Berkeley.

Alongside his academic career, he has held key roles as Senior Product Manager at Colgate and Chief Operating Officer at Myer Pacific Holdings. He now serves as Principal at ORBIS Associates and is a member of the venture capital firm Blackbird.