Leadership and Innovation - International Institute for Learning

Madelyn Blair, PhD
Principal
Pelerei LLC

Resilience is a Decision — Are Companies Ready?

Can an organization become more resilient? If the airlines were more resilient, would they need to cancel so many flights at the height of the holiday season? When supply chains stumbled, how does a retail furniture store keep customers happy? This talk is based on Dr. Blair’s bestselling book, Unlocked: Discover how to embrace the unexpected. All about nurturing resilience, the strategies for individuals are translated into strategies for use with teams and organizations. In today’s environment, being resilient is essential – personally, professionally, and as an organization. Developing resilience prepares for moments when the unexpected occurs. Examples will be offered.

BIO:

Madelyn Blair is a speaker, author, TV host and resilience advisor. She specializes in unlocking resilience for individuals and work teams needing to meet today’s complex challenges with greater ease. Author of five books, her most recent book, Unlocked: Discover how to embrace the unexpected became #1 bestseller. Her tv show, Unlocked, is shown weekly on e360tv. She was recently awarded Renaissance Leader of 2021 by The Stone Register of New York. She has global clients including Regional Chamber of Cincinnati, PwC, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Huawei Technologies and more. She is a former Division Chief at the World Bank and has run her own company for more than 30 years. Dr. Blair holds a PhD in organizational psychology from the University of Tilburg, The Netherlands. She is known for being a leader who has always brought her teams to a higher level of productivity. For more see madelynblair.com.

Craig Sampson
Innovation Leader and Educator
TBD Innovation

Designing Experiences: We Are All innovators

We tend to think of ourselves and our businesses in certain categories – we each operate in a particular role, in a department, in a company, in an industry. And we create a wide range of “things:” products, services, technologies, platforms, spaces, etc. And yet, if we use the lens of Human Centered Design, we can see that we are all designers of human experiences.

With the experience of a designer and the voice of an educator, Craig Sampson will introduce the methods and principles of Design Thinking which allow us to understand these human experiences, and create better ones. Craig will bring these concepts to life with a rich diversity of real-world innovation examples which he has seen in his career.

Key learnings from this presentation:

• Principles of innovation which can guide how you approach opportunities
• A new 2×2 model for Design Thinking which will help you think deeper, and bigger
• A powerful framework for creating holistic innovations – TBD
• Innovation examples (lots of them) to inform and inspire you

No matter our industry or our role, we can each design better experiences for people – that includes our customers, our colleagues, and the world at large.

BIO:

Craig Sampson is an innovator, advisor, leader, and educator. He is the founder of TBD Innovation and a graduate design instructor at the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University.

Craig helps unlock the potential of technology, to create new value for business through human-centered design. Craig enables new growth for companies ranging from early-stage start-ups to large corporations by helping clarify purpose, promoting a culture of innovation, identifying new opportunity spaces and creating remarkable products, services, experiences, and businesses.

Craig spent much of his career at IDEO, founding and leading the firm’s Chicago office, and later founding and leading IDEO’s Global Healthcare Practice. As Chief Innovation Officer at World Kitchen, Craig led R&D, design, engineering, and new product marketing for brands such as Pyrex and Corningware. Craig received a BSME with honors from the University of Colorado, and a MSME with a focus on Product Design from Stanford University.

At the Segal Design Institute, Craig created the course “Designing Product Interactions,” which explores the frontiers of smart products and human sensory experiences (the human side of IoT), and co-created the course “CPG Product and Business Innovation Studio” which guides multidisciplinary student teams through real-world innovation challenges provided by P&G.

Craig is a collaborative and natural change agent who inspires others, connects the dots, and makes new dots.

Matt Anderson, PMP, PMI-ACP, ICP-APO
Sr Director, Enterprise PMO
Greenway Health

Building an Agile Organization – Agile Executive Leadership

Senior and Middle Management (aka Executives) are often listed as impediments to sustained agility, particularly at scale. Terms like the frozen middle are popularized with limited information on how to effectively help these leaders thrive in an agile environment. Using lessons learned from multiple agile companies, participants will be exposed to a series of easy mantras that will help build an agile mindset within leadership to build and grow a sustainable agile culture and model.

Key Takeaways:

• A list of values, inspired by the Agile Manifesto, on how to be an agile executive
- ○ Outcomes over Deliverables
- ○ Leadership over Management
- ○ Partnership over Outsourcing
- ○ Resiliency over Optimization
- ○ Value Streams over Organization Structures
• Scenarios in how they can apply this thinking in their day to day and strategic planning
• Direct to additional resources where they can gather more information

BIO:

Matt Anderson has over 25 years in IT with the past 15 leading PMOs at various organizations and driving Agile Transformation/Adoption efforts. Matt focuses on helping organizations blend best practice project management, ITIL and agile practices, directly managing portfolios valued over $500M annually to achieve client and business outcomes.

Matt has worked with several agile think tanks including the Steve Denning Learning Consortium and the Business Agility Institute, studying agile at scale and how to drive true business agility beyond traditional IT.

Matt has been a regular speaker at global PMO and Agile conferences for more than a decade.

Joe Hart
President & CEO
Dale Carnegie

Unleashing Creativity: Organizational Purpose, Engagement and Diversity

Creativity has dominated the business landscape for the past two years. Agile organizations met the moment and distinguished themselves from the competition, cementing market share and propelling their brands into the forefront even during a crisis.

In 2022, organizations and leaders are confronted with new uncertainty and evolving challenges. Yet for innovation to continue and creativity to flourish in a sustainable way, organizations need to have the right environment – the right corporate culture.

Join Dale Carnegie’s President & CEO Joe Hart as he uncovers the keys to developing a culture of creativity. Informed by a recent global workplace research study, Joe will share why leaders and their organizations must be able to articulate organizational purpose, have the skills to drive employee engagement, and the attitudes and understanding to nurture a diverse and inclusive workplace.

Key Takeaways for this session include:

Understand the four phases of the creativity process leading to innovative outcomes
Learn the key drivers enabling creativity at the individual, team and organizational level
How to manage the “paradoxes of creativity”
Why purpose, engagement and diversity stand out as critical drivers of innovation

BIO:

Becoming CEO of Dale Carnegie in 2015, Joe has continued to lead the effort that has helped thousands of organizations and millions of individuals take command—of their businesses, their careers, and their futures. Joe started his career as a practicing attorney at two prominent firms where he focused on contract-related litigation. In 1998, he joined The Taubman Company, developer of regional shopping centers, becoming Development Director. In 2000, he followed a dream and started a venture and angel-backed e-Learning company called InfoAlly. In 2005, Joe sold InfoAlly and went on to co-found and become president of AssetHealth.possible. Overall, Louria is fiercely committed to unleashing greatness, success and happiness in business and people’s lives.

Barry Moline
President
BJM Solutions

How a Culture of Teamwork Creates Engagement, Happiness, and High Performance

When people learn more about one another — by sharing stories about their backgrounds and what’s going on in their lives — they begin to like each other and find more common ground. And when they know their colleagues better, they want to do a good job for each other. The results are better solutions in a supportive environment. Barry shares the secrets – and the specific actions – successful organizations use to swiftly build great teams.

Key takeaways:

• Effective ways to build and strengthen workplace relationships
• Secrets for building great teams and effective organizations
• Engaging with people is key to building satisfying and successful careers
• Connecting leads to your personal happiness

BIO:

Barry Moline is a positive leader committed to helping you achieve at your highest level. In his successful 25 years as a CEO, he has seen many people struggle to collaborate and lead. Recognizing the widespread need to improve teamwork and leadership, Barry investigated and discovered the keys that best-practice organizations use to quickly collaborate and encourage staff to grow productive workplace relationships. He is eager to bring this valuable wisdom to your audience.

After 4 years of research, Barry wrote the award-winning book Connect!, where he shares the secrets to successful teamwork, communication and leadership. He’s a columnist on Forbes.com and appears frequently in the media, including NPR, The New York Times, Washington Post, Authority Magazine and many more.

Bob Safian
Host
Masters of Scale: Rapid Response podcast

Lessons of Rapid Response – Succeeding in the Age of Covid

Our business reality has been permanently adjusted. The challenges of the “BC” era—before coronavirus—were already acute, with intense competition, generational and global pressures rising, tech-fueled uncertainties. But in today’s “AC” world—after coronavirus—the pressures are even more acute, and the stakes even higher. To succeed in this environment requires a new kind of playbook.

Drawing on more than 150 intensive, in-depth interviews since the pandemic began with the world’s top CEOs and business leaders, journalist and strategic adviser Bob Safian offers a cohesive framework for addressing these unprecedented times. Presenting clear, engaging and often-unexpected lessons, Safian delves into the personal, practical learnings of leaders from Airbnb to Nike, GM to Verizon, sharing memorable and often intimate stories of their in-the-trenches choices, decisions and epiphanies. By bringing to life the insights that matter most, this session illuminates how we must refine the equation for success to create a better future.

Key Takeaways:

• For all today’s dislocations, now is an ideal moment to inspire and reshape a career, a team, an organization.
• You can move faster and more flexibly than you think you can
• Principle-based decisions should outweigh business-based decisions
• Embracing the right mindset is the ultimate competitive advantage

BIO:

Bob Safian is one of the most sought-after voices in modern business. From hosting acclaimed podcast Masters of Scale: Rapid Response—which has identified critical post-pandemic lessons across industries— to editorial leadership positions at Fast Company, Time, and Fortune, Safian has been lauded as an unparalleled source of insight on the future of global enterprise.

When Covid-19 struck, Safian was tapped to host Rapid Response, dedicated to covering the real-time adjustments required in this time of uncertainty. Safian’s guests have included scores of CEOs from Airbnb to Verizon, Delta to GM, Marriott to Target, plus leaders in medicine, philanthropy, academia, emerging tech and more. Cited by The New York Times as one of its “Podcasts for the Pandemic Era,” Rapid Response gets millions of downloads each month. Through his advisory firm The Flux Group, Safian also provides confidential strategic advice to key Fortune 50 companies, global professional-services firms, high-impact nonprofits and more.

Katrina Pugh
President and Lecturer
AlignConsulting and Columbia University

Smarter Innovation: Six Disciplines for Getting to Market Faster Together

Collaboration can inform where ideas come from, how they develop, and how they impact economies and societies. We’ll review research, examples, and habits for innovation using the prism of six collaborative innovation dimensions: bridging, social integration, capability validation, industry assessment, commercialization and the innovation ecology.

Key Takeaways Include:

• Innovation requires discipline, not just serendipity.
• Innovation is not a linear process. For example, we might start with a unique capability, an analogy, a trusted network, or even an unrelated brand.
• Our networks can be a cradle for innovation, but we must invest in relationships and nexus skills.

BIO:

Katrina (Kate) Pugh is an adjunct faculty member and the former Academic Director of Columbia University’s Information and Knowledge Strategy (IKNS) Master of Science program. She specializes in business strategy, open innovation, collaboration, networks, and knowledge-driven business transformation. Kate has over twenty years of consulting and industry experience in the sustainability, financial services, health sciences, energy, information technology, and international development sectors.

Kate was general editor and co-author of Smarter Innovation: How Interactive Processes Drive Better Business Results (Ark Group, 2014), author of Sharing Hidden Know-How (Jossey-Bass/Wiley, April 2011), and has published in the Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Ivey Business Journal and Review of Economics and Statistics. https://sps.columbia.edu/faculty/katrina-pugh and https://linkedin.com/in/katepugh

Tendayi Viki
Associate Partner & Author
Strategyzer

Leading Innovation

The pandemic has made evident that the best strategy for companies to navigate out of crises and respond to disruption is to innovate. To achieve success with innovation, companies should not just work on the occasional one-off project. Companies need to design their processes and culture to drive innovation as a repeatable process. Corporate leaders have an important role to play if companies are to move beyond training teams on design thinking, lean startup and agile. Without leadership support, most innovation programs are dead on arrival.

In this keynote, Tendayi Viki addresses questions such as: What is the best way to lead innovation within established companies? How can leaders create the right environment for the most innovative ideas to thrive? How do you lead teams that are searching for, versus executing on, a business model? How can leaders ask the right questions at the right time?

Key Takeaways:

• Leaders need to have the right convictions about how innovation works, in order to avoid innovation theatre.
• Leaders cannot select the winning ideas on day one, leaders should create the right context for the winning ideas to emerge.
• Leaders should make decisions based on evidence of traction, before investing in scaling an innovative idea.

BIO:

Tendayi Viki is an author and corporate innovation expert. As Associate Partner at Strategyzer, he helps companies innovate for the future while managing their core business. He has written three books; Pirates In The Navy, The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle. He previously served as Director of Product Lifecycle at Pearson, where he co-developed an innovation framework that won the Best Innovation Program 2015 at the Corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York. Tendayi was shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2021 and was named on the Thinkers50 2018 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. He is also a regular contributor at Forbes.

Tom Brazil
Chief Digital & Innovation Officer
Integrated Computer Solutions

Dynamic Innovation Portfolio Management

Due to the exponential pace of technological and societal change, organizations using traditional methods for innovation management are finding it harder to keep their innovation efforts in alignment with that change. The reason is simple: as the rate of change increases, so does the amount of uncertainty about the future – which prevents many organizations from harnessing that change to their strategic advantage.

Future-Fit organizations, however, are shaping the pace of change to their advantage by objectively managing more dynamic innovation portfolios. In this session, Tom will guide you through some important mechanisms that any organization can implement to help them to not only survive – but to thrive in this age of uncertainty.

You will learn:

• The relationship between strategy and the innovation portfolio
• How future-fit leaders relentlessly challenge the status quo in an objective manner
• Key principles for effective dynamic innovation portfolio management

BIO:

Tom Brazil is the Chief Digital & Innovation officer of Integrated Computer Solutions (ICS), Inc. A lifelong innovator, Tom is a Certified Manager of Innovation (CMI), a Certified Chief Innovation Officer (CMI-CIO), and a board member of the International Association of Innovation Professionals (www.iaoip.org). In 2019 he was appointed by ANSI to represent the United States as an Innovation Management expert on the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for ISO Technical Committee 279, charged with creating the ISO 56000 series of Innovation Management standards. Tom is also a Gartner© Innovation Cohort, advising Gartner Analysts on Innovation Management best practices, and a contributing author to the Future-Fit Manifesto. He is also the author of the book “Implementing an Agile Innovation Management System” and a contributor to the renowned PMI expert Dr. Harold Kerzner for his book “Innovation Project Management.”

Louria Lindauer
Founder / Agile & Leadership Coach
Success Agility LLC 

Be a Better Inclusive Leader

The world is changing. And what sets innovative and fast-paced companies apart is their vision, awareness, and adaptability at all levels of leadership. It’s time that as people and as leaders, we create space for sustainable and empowered environments and results.

In this session, we will discover the formula Culturally Intelligence + Emotional Intelligence = Inclusive Leadership. Inclusive Leadership creates adaptive leaders, organizations, and teams, leading to higher profitability, customer satisfaction, improved quality and have a more harmonious culture.

Diverse groups of multi-diverse people create excellence. In collaborative team cultures, the value of diverse backgrounds and perspectives is fully realized. There’s a sense of collective belonging in an empowering environment, new ideas and brilliant thinking come alive. All with sustainable results.

Key Takeaways for this session include:

• Learn the components of Cultural Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, and Inclusive Leadership
• Foster an empowered environment where people’s talents are fully utilized and where all voices are heard
• Explore cultural values to create diversity of thought within teams.
• See how you can improve productivity and retention

BIO:

For the past 25 years, Louria has empowered and created People First Environments, where talents are celebrated and voices matter.  As an international Executive Agile & Leadership Coach, she utilizes her mastery of coaching, facilitation, teaching, and mentoring.

Louria Lindauer creates pathways for people to see beyond their failures to discover and live their purpose with courage and immense passion! Additionally, she has lived every role in an Agile organization from software engineer, marketing to organizational change, and strategy coach. Therefore, allowing her the understanding and empathy to reach, hear, guide and inspire others to victory and live beyond their failures.

Success Agility LLC, creates the know-how to change chaos into sustainable customized solutions for non-profits, small to fortune 500 companies. Louria’s unique and diverse experience allows her insights into the mindset and skillset of the vertical slice (team, program, and executive level) of an organization to co-create sustainable culture change, shared vision, streamlined processes, and increased employee engagement in an ever-changing environment.

Louria fell in love with coaching when she took her first Agile Coaching course which lead her to co-active coaching and becoming a Co-Active Leadership Faculty. Coupled with her passion and ability to lead with courage, love, big laughter, play, faith, connection, creativity, and making the impossible possible. Overall, Louria is fiercely committed to unleashing greatness, success and happiness in business and people’s lives.

Jana Eggers
CEO
Nara Logics

The Most Critical Ingredient to Successful AI Use: Your Organization

With AI, the focus is most often on the data and technology required. This talk will focus on what AI needs from your organization to be successful. The requirements covered will be:

• Lead and support roles that drive AI
• Processes you’ll need for success
• Obstacles that you’ll need to clear
• How to drive goal clarity

We’ll go through success and failure stories from multiple companies to set you up for success.

What You Will Learn:

• Roles and processes to define
• Skills to find and build
• Matching projects and goals

BIO:

Jana Eggers is CEO of the neuroscience-inspired, artificial intelligence platform company, Nara Logics. Eggers started her career as a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Her research in conducting polymers led her to supercomputing and AI research. This work fuels her passion for deploying the latest high-end technology to solve the most challenging business problems, including supply chain optimization at MIT start-up PTCG (bought by American Airlines); early internet search engine efforts at CMU-developed Lycos; advanced multi-lingual natural language processing at MIT start-up Basis Technology (licensed by Google and Amazon); and global mass customization networks at German start-up Spreadshirt (licensed by Coca Cola, Warner Brothers, Nissan). She continues to be active in AI research with a focus on applying the right algorithms for the problems being solved. Her current work – with Nara Logics co-founder, Dr. Nathan Wilson – focuses on bringing the latest neuroscience research to take AI’s perception capabilities into decision making with explainability.

Hassan Osman
PMO Director & Author
Cisco Systems

Hybrid Work Management: A four-part framework for building and leading a hybrid team in the new workplace

Organizations around the globe are presented with the challenge of how to structure and organize their teams. Back to the office, fully remote, or somewhere in between? In this session, Hassan Osman, expert in virtual and hybrid teamwork, will cover a four-part framework that will help you analyze, plan, manage and evaluate your team’s hybrid work model effectively.

You will learn:

• The main elements of a Hybrid Work Model
• How to analyze your hybrid work arrangement from a job and employee perspective.
• How to run meetings that are productive for on-site and remote team members
• How to define and evaluate the success factors of a hybrid work model

BIO:

Hassan Osman is a Program Management Office (PMO) Director at Cisco Systems* where he leads global virtual teams on delivering large and complex programs.

He is the author of several Amazon Bestselling books, including “Hybrid Work Management,” “Influencing Virtual Teams,” and “Don’t Reply All.”

Before joining Cisco, Hassan was a manager at EY, where he analyzed failing programs at Fortune 100 companies and recommended strategic plans to fix them.

He is a certified PMP, CSM, and ITIL, and blogs about managing remote teams on www.thecouchmanager.com

*Views are his own and not those of Cisco.

Andrew Lee
Talent Leader

The Secret to Developing Leaders

As organizations enter a post Covid environment many will find one area that lacked focus over the course of the last two years was in the development of their talent. Managers have awaken to a hyper competitive talent market where every organization wants to attract and hire great leaders. These companies want to hire someone who can come in on Day One and be spectacular! Unfortunately, that is not the way 99% of hiring works and that thought process is unrealistic.

Hiring and development is not about hiring someone with a low ceiling;- hiring is about bringing someone into your organization with a high ceiling. What if I told you that there were key strategies and techniques you could use to ensure that you not only hired, but developed leaders in your organization with high potential and high output. Would that be of interest to you? We will discuss how to attract and develop talent that will increase your organization’s productivity and efficiency.

Key Takeaways will include:

• A leader is someone who can encourage, inspire, affect, and drive business results. Reporting structures mean little, but influence means everything.
• Leadership development begins by attracting quality talent to your organization.
• In order to grow future leaders you need to make sure that you are taking time to set up weekly or monthly check ins

BIO:

Andrew Lee is an expert in the field of leadership strategies, talent management and talent acquisition. With more than 15 years of management experience in corporate functions and agency recruiting, Andrew has a unique perspective on what it takes to win in the workplace.

Andrew is an accomplished thought leader and speaker who has delivered the successful Ted Talk “How to Interview and Find a Rockstar.” He is a keynote speaker and he serves on several advisory boards. Andrew is a Veteran and native of Charlotte, N.C., where he currently resides with his wife Tiffany and their three daughters Elizabeth, Isabelle, and Charlotte.

Pammy Subramony
Associate Group Director, Head of Submissions and Operations
Clinical and Quantitative Pharmacology (CPQP), R&D, AstraZeneca

Keith Wilson
Senior Trainer/Consultant
IIL

AstraZeneca – Embarking on an Agile Journey

Pammy Subramony and Keith Wilson delivered this session on “AstraZeneca – Embarking on an Agile Journey” at IIL’s 2021 Agile & Scrum Online Conference. Part 2, originally planned to be featured on IPM Day 2021 as well, has been delayed until a future IIL Conference. Stay tuned for that!

The term ‘Agile Transformation’ is commonly used within teams and organizations who are looking to become more adaptable in their work. But how to go about this transformation is a tough question.

In Part 1 of this exclusive series, we will join AstraZeneca as they embark on their Agile Journey. The session will be led by Pammy Subramony, Associate Group Director, Head of Submissions and Operations, Clinical and Quantitative Pharmacology, R&D at AstraZeneca, and Keith Wilson, Sr. Trainer and Consultant at IIL.

What You Will Learn:

• How to assess the current Project Management situation
• The expected benefits and potential challenges of transitioning to Agile
• An overview of different Agile practices
• Defining a strategy for the Agile Journey

BIOS:

Dr. Pammy Subramony has 15 plus years of experience and leadership from early development to commercialization managing programs in biologics, device combination products and small molecules ranging from start-up to large pharmaceutical companies.

Keith Wilson has over 25 years of successful coaching, training, management, and consulting experience globally with over 100 happy clients. He has extensive Agile Training/Coaching experience and makes Agile work for his clients.

Lindsay McGregor
Author and Co-Founder
Vega Factor

Neel Doshi
Author and Co-Founder
Vega Factor

The Science of Performance

The concept of performance takes up a central place in our world. It is one of the key metrics in our lives and has a prominent place, even at an early age. It is considered in school, sports, relationships, work, and of course, projects.

In this session, we’ll leverage history, current events, experiential learning, and science to explain what performance is, what drives it, and most importantly, what that means for you and any person at work.

We’ll consider a number of experiments, designed to drive value against today’s challenges. From creating “intensity without pressure” to encouraging every colleague to play a “game of impact”, attendees will leave with a foundation from which to thoughtfully tweak their own operating models, performance, and experience.

BIO:

Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi are the co-founders of Vega Factor and co-authors of the bestselling book, Primed to Perform: How to Build the Highest Performing Cultures Through the Science of Total Motivation.

Previously, Lindsay led projects at McKinsey & Company, working with large fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, universities and school systems. She received her B.A. from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard. In her spare time she loves investigating and sharing great stories.

Neel was previously a Partner at McKinsey & Company, CTO and founding member of an award-winning tech startup, and employee of several mega-institutions. He studied engineering at MIT and received his MBA from Wharton. In his spare time, he’s an avid yet mediocre woodworker and photographer.

Liliana Cerilo
Head of Strategy, Exploratory
Google

Innovation as a Way to Embrace Change

We’ve entered a very disruptive time that has generated the condition for breakthrough innovation as a way to overcome the status quo and the danger of becoming obsolete. Across industries, we are seeing global companies forced to adapt by finding new business models and methods for survival, ensuring business continuity, or serving their customer needs. For this reason, innovation matters now more than ever.

In this talk, Liliana Cerilo will discuss bringing innovative solutions to life. She’s the Head of Strategy at an innovation team at Google called Exploratory, whose mission is to build transformational solutions that solve her largest global brand partners’ most critical business challenges.

In this discussion, Liliana will share 5 tried and tested fundamentals to successfully and consistently launch innovative solutions. She will challenge you throughout her talk to think outside the box, forget about your title and its core responsibilities, and truly focus on what it takes to be an innovator.

Key Takeaways:

• The impact of having a vision
• What it means to think strategically
• How to allow space to be innovative
• The importance of cross team collaboration
• Find the entrepreneur in you – not taking no for an answer

BIO:

Liliana has been with Google for 9 years. As Head of Strategy for the Exploratory, Liliana is building technology-driven business innovation partnerships with the world’s largest brands. Working with product teams across Google and Alphabet, these partnerships leverage groundbreaking innovation to solve critical business challenges and help future-proof against evolving industries.

Prior to joining Google, Liliana had a combined 12 years experience working in U.S. advertising agencies in both the Mainstream and Multicultural markets in Miami and New York. She has led insight generation and strategy development for top blue chip clients across various categories. Some of them included Heineken, Heineken Light, Wendy’s, IKEA, CitiFinancial, Verizon Wireless, MINI, Molson Canadian, Miller Light, Burger King, Wheat Thins, Planter’s Peanuts, among others.

As an advocate for diversity and inclusion, Liliana was one of the pioneers for the Latinas at Google Summit, which brought together more than 500 Latinas from across the company to network, bond and expand their workplace community. This has now expanded to be a network of over 1K members. Outside of the workplace, Liliana serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors for Beauty Bus Foundation, she enjoys international travel, playing tennis, riding her bike, swimming and trying new and exciting food with family and friends.

Frank Ryle
Trainer
International Institute for Learning (IIL)

Giants’ Shoulders – Making Project Connections

All projects are a journey to towards a goal. All projects share the characteristics of being a temporary endeavor with a uniqueness of scope or environment that makes them very different from operations type work.

The temporariness of the project requires that we manage time – that valuable resource that will consume and surprise us if we don’t manage it well.

A project schedule is our representation of future time – or future memories – that we build together to provide us with confidence, guidance and measuring points along the journey.

A well-built schedule requires three key ingredients:

i) An agreed scope representing the requirements of the stakeholders
ii) Estimates of task durations by the performers
iii) Solid connections between the tasks – Dependencies and sequencing

This session and exercise will focus on that third element – the connections. It is no more or less important than the other two. However it does often provide an opportunity for conversations that can be referred to as ‘storming’ – in the Tuckman/Jensen model of Team Development (Forming/Storming/Norming/Performing/Adjourning).

The game is designed to provide an opportunity to practice and improve our ability to identify connections/ associations/links between famous individuals from the Arts, Science and

Craft worlds. We can use the same skill and ability to identify connections/ dependencies/ sequences between our project tasks.

BIO:

Frank has almost 20 years of experience in the construction and manufacturing industries, as well as ten years of practical project / program managementexperience throughout Europe, Asia and the United States, on projectsvarying from five people to 400 people and from $5 million to $1.2 billion. Since 2002, Frank has trained hundreds of project leaders on project management best practices

Gregory L. Robinson
Program Director, James Webb Space Telescope
NASA, Science Mission Directorate

James Webb Space Telescope – Leading Large Complex Global Projects

The James Webb Space Telescope will explore every phase of cosmic history – from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe, and everything in between. Webb will reveal new and unexpected discoveries, and help humankind understand the origins of the universe and our place in it. This mission, scheduled for a December 18, 2021 launch, is a collaboration of NASA, the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency. We discuss the motivating science questions that required the development of the observatory, highlight the technologies, and project management challenges and lessons learned encountered during the development of this large complex global project.

Although Webb is arguably an unparalleled engineering and technological feat, we explore the critical role of project management in making the world’s largest space telescope a success. As NASA and the space industry are moving swiftly to new approaches, new systems, and far more commercial exploration (often referred to as “new space”) than previously imagined. We also explore how acquisition and project management are evolving towards that future.

BIO:

Mr. Robinson is currently the Program Director of the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb). His focus is development efficiency, management processes, contractor performance, and mission success. Formerly the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Deputy Associate Administrator for Programs; ensuring high performance during development and operations of 114 Science flight projects.

Mr. Robinson held the position of Deputy Director of NASA’s John Glenn Research Center, consisting of 3,200 employees, where the scope spans research and technology, aeronautics, science spaceflight, and human spaceflight. He served as NASA’s Deputy Chief Engineer for several years where he led engineering and program and project management strategy, policy, implementation rigor, and performance management. He was intricately engaged with the last 21 shuttle launches post Columbia Shuttle accident, as well as numerous satellite developments and launches.

Mr. Robinson also served as Deputy Assistant Administrator for Systems at NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, leading the acquisition and management of all satellite systems. He spent 11 years in various leadership positions at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Mr. Robinson has over 30 years of engineering, program and project management, and senior executive leadership at NASA

Mr. Robinson served as faculty at the George Washington University, Department of Engineering Management & Systems Engineering.

He received the Presidential Distinguished Executive Rank Award in 2013, and the Presidential Meritorious Executive Rank Award in 2007.

Karl Smedley
Programme Manager / Deliverer
Fujitsu

A Practical Guide to Introducing Agile

“Don’t throw your baby out with the bath Water(fall)”. This is not a deep conversation about Agile v Waterfall or where to use them (that is for other talks and much deeper thinkers /agile purists). Instead, this talk acknowledges that the world we are living in is complex, where every delivery is different and not binary, i.e., Agile or Waterfall.

This talk is aimed at “Non Agilists” and focuses on how they shouldn’t be scared of agile and that it isn’t about throwing away everything you have learnt from delivering in a more traditional/Waterfall way. It is about building on them and embracing the true mindset and heart and soul of Agile.

The key takeaways of the session include:

• An introduction to some of the basic concepts of agile and which to focus on first
• How to start your journey from “Non Agilist” to a person that can deliver irrespective of environment
• Some of the real-life examples and approaches that have been successfully used kick start the journey for both individuals and teams

BIO:

Karl has been successfully delivering projects and programmes for 20 years. These have predominantly been non software development led and therefore have mainly utilized traditional waterfall methodologies (PRINCE2 / MSP certified).

When Agile starting to gain more popularity outside of pure software development in the mid 2010s, Karl was initially sceptical of how it effective it would be outside of software development and how this would impact Project/Programme Managers. However, once he realised that Agile from a purist sense doesn’t have to be applied that is when he truly embraced Agile and began to understand how the key concepts and mindset of Agile when overlaid alongside traditional methodologies can develop a powerful delivery approach.

Karl now sees himself more of a “Deliverer of anything” rather than just a pigeonholed Project/Programme Manager. Karl is a Certified SAFe® 5 Program Consultant and uses his experience and knowledge to help train and coach others on how to embrace Agile.

Kaihan Krippendorff
CEO
Outthinker Strategy Network

Driving Innovation from Within: A Guide for Employees and Organizational Leaders

Kaihan Krippendorff delivered this excellent session on “Driving Innovation from Within: A Guide for Employees and Organizational Leaders” at IIL’s 2021 Leadership & Innovation Online Conference.

“Innovation” brings to mind the maverick entrepreneur who quits their job, at unimaginable odds, to build a business on their own. But this entrepreneurial story is a myth. As a successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO, Kaihan Krippendorff argues that intrapreneurs – employees who incubate new businesses within corporations – have had a far greater impact on the world. Nearly all of the most transformative innovations over the past three decades, from e-mail and the Internet to DNA sequencing and MRI scans, were introduced by employees who did not quit their jobs but instead took the challenge of innovating from within.

Drawing on five years of in-depth research of hundreds of successful innovators and Intrapreneurial Intensity, as well as insights from thought leaders, C-suite leaders, business unit leaders, and front-line employees, Kaihan will share exclusive insights from his book, Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs (Columbia University Press, 2019).

Kaihan will unveil the most critical internal focus areas for driving innovation and moving your organization forward into the future. He will share specific tools, frameworks and techniques used by successful innovators to manage and unlock the value of employees’ ideas to increase corporate innovation levels and deliver bottom-line results. Participants will have actionable next steps to transform their organization by testing and scaling fresh ideas that generate value and growth. They will leave feeling inspired and empowered, ready to take on the future.

In this inspiring keynote, you will learn about:

• The IN-OVATE Framework
• The seven barriers of internal innovation and how to overcome them
• The six characteristics of Internal Innovators
• The seven steps to build an agile innovation team
• How to disrupt your competition without disrupting your business
• What it takes to lead an innovative organization and drive transformation
• How to shift your organizational mindset and culture
• How to build a wave of internal support for growth, innovation and creativity by reinforcing the idea that innovation is possible, attainable, and ultimately actionable

BIO:

Kaihan Krippendorff has made a commitment to helping organizations and individuals thrive in today’s era of fast-paced disruptive technological change.

He began his career with McKinsey & Company before founding the growth strategy and innovation consulting firm Outthinker, whose growth strategies and innovations have generated over $2.5B in revenue for many of the world’s most recognizable companies including BNY Mellon, Citibank, L’Oréal, Microsoft, and Viacom. He is a best-selling author of five books, most recently the Edison Award nominated Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs.

Kaihan is a member of the prestigious Thinkers50 radar group – A global selection of the top 30 management thinkers in the world to look out for. Thinkers50 also recognized Kaihan as one of the 8 most influential innovation thought leaders in the world considering him for a Distinguished Achievement Award in Innovation – given to the person in the world that has contributed the most to the world’s understanding of innovation in the past two years.

Amidst his dizzying schedule of keynote speeches, consulting projects, ongoing research and writing, Kaihan still finds time to teach at business schools throughout the US and internationally (including NYU, FIU, and UA). Regularly featured in major business media outlets, Kaihan is an advisory board member of multiple national and international companies.

Louria Lindauer
Founder & Agile & Leadership Coach
SuccessAgility LLC

Our Unconscious Bias and Microaggressions: Creating culture self-awareness in you and your world

Louria Lindauer delivered this excellent session on “Our Unconscious Bias and Microaggressions: Creating culture self-awareness in you and your world” at IIL’s 2021 International Project Management Day Online Conference.

Everyone is unique, and we all see and interact differently with the world around us. Our upbringings, our relationships, our communities, and the culture that we are a part of are just some of the elements that influence our worldview and our own cultural bubble.

Most people have some understanding of unconscious bias, but the term “microaggression” may be less known to some. When heading into this presentation, it is relevant to keep in mind that due to our cultural bubbles, we all hold unconscious biases within us and that many of us have displayed microaggressions towards others. What is also true is that, most likely, everyone has been on the receiving end of such behavior whether you realize it or not.

This session will set you up to become more aware of your own (and others’) unconscious biases and microaggressions through words, thoughts, and impact – and how You can take action. Examining the communities where we live and the organizations where we work, we will discover how to recognize and handle the intentional and unintentional biases that prevail all around us to help contribute and create a safer personal and work environment.

We will learn:

• What is unconscious bias?
• What is a microaggression and is it really micro?
• Where do unconscious bias and microaggressions come from?
• Cultural self-awareness starts with you and your world
• Microaggression Giver: Being responsible for your impact
• Microaggression Receiver: When to talk about it or walk away?

BIO:

For the past 25 years, Louria has empowered and created “People First Environments”, where talents are celebrated and voices matter. As an international Executive Agile & Leadership Coach she utilizes her mastery of coaching, facilitation, teaching and mentoring to breathe life into ‘just surviving’ organizations to thriving.

Louria Lindauer creates pathways for people to see beyond their failures to discover and live their purpose with courage and immense passion! Additionally, she has lived every role in agile organization from software engineer, marketing to organizational change and strategy coach. Therefore, allowing her the understanding and empathy to reach, hear, guide and inspire others to their victory and live beyond their failures.

Success Agility, her company, creates the know-how to change chaos into sustainable customized solutions for non-profits, small to fortune 500 companies. Louria’s unique diverse experience allows her insights into the mindset and skillset of the vertical slice (team, program and executive level) of an organization to co-create sustainable culture change, shared vision, streamlined processes, and increased employee engagement in an ever-changing environment.

Louria fell in love with coaching when she took her first agile coaching course which lead her to co-active coaching and becoming a Co-Active Leadership Faculty. Coupled with her passion and ability to lead with courage, love, big laughter, play, faith, connection, creativity, and making the impossible possible. Overall, Louria is fiercely committed to unleashing greatness, success and happiness in business and people’s lives.

Superpowers:

• Funny, Courageous and Speak the Truth – the Elephant in the Room! Not afraid to tell the Emperor he has no clothes
• Loves and Excels at Brainstorming Innovative Ideas & Strategic Creative Solutions
• Spark Brilliant and Productive Conversations with Powerful Questions & Perspectives
• High Intuition and Emotional Intelligence to see beyond the words and to the true “why” of the person or group
• Remote Working, Master Facilitator, Agile Coaching & Mentoring
• Plus, Authentic, Competitive, Empathetic, go-getter with high Emotional Intelligence
• She sees beyond the impossible to THE POSSIBLE!

Dominic Price
Work Futurist
Atlassian

Less process, more guidance. Tips for effectively scaling great teams.

Dom Price delivered this excellent session on “Less process, more guidance. Tips for effectively scaling great teams” at IIL’s 2018 Agile & Scrum Online Conference.

The lone genius is dead. EY reports that 90% of organisations are solving problems so complex, that they need teams. Dom Price, Head of R&D and Work Futurist from Atlassian joins us to share his personal experiences in helping Atlassian scale over the last 5 years, and be more nimble, adaptive and relevant, than ever before. He’ll share why they decided to take on team work, how they did it, and even let us in on some of the pitfalls along the way. This isn’t a session on theory. Dom will share practical insights, from Atlassian, and from over 100 other organisations where they’ve shared their way of working.

BIO:

Born to Joy in the harsh Manchester Winter of 77, Dominic has a career that has reached far and wide through Europe, US and Asia PAC.

Dom is proud to work at Atlassian, the home of the most intelligent t-shirt wearers in business. As resident Work Futurist, Dom is the in-house “Team Doctor” helping Atlassian scale by being ruthlessly efficient and effective. Dom helped pioneer Atlassian’s Team Playbook and has a deep passion for understanding the future of work and the changes we need to make today.

He has previously been the GM Program Management for a global gaming company and a Director of Deloitte.

A keen traveller, Dom has traversed over 50 countries so far, but after 17 years on these shores, he calls Australia home. 

Dr. Harold Kerzner
Senior Executive Director
International Institute for Learning (IIL)

The Building Blocks of Tomorrow’s Impactful Organization

The new ways of working have been diversifying—and fast. Leaders worldwide are looking for signs and indicators of what the impactful organization of the future would look like and what its success attributes would need to be. This group of world-renowned panelists cover the range of background areas needed to tackle this complex topic. They represent champions of strategy implementation, project management know-how, coaching, boards advisory, and agility in delivering work results. They will help us envision and map the course for the future-ready organization.

A multitude of critical building blocks will be explored during this interactive panel:

• The culture of tomorrow’s workplaces
• Skillsets for leading change initiatives and connecting with clear vision
• The adaptability attributes of experimentation, resilience, and fluid digitization
• The strategic role of project management in sustaining success
• How do leaders create the focused organization?
• Igniting passion across product delivery teams
• The reinventing of project management as the core for transforming tomorrow’s organizations

BIO:

Harold Kerzner, Ph.D. is Senior Executive Director at the International Institute for Learning (IIL). He is a globally recognized expert on project management and strategic planning, and the author of many best-selling textbooks including Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects (Wiley, 2019).

He has a MS and Ph.D. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Illinois and an MBA from Utah State University. He is a prior Air Force Officer and spent several years at Morton-Thiokol in project management. He taught engineering at the University of Illinois and business administration at Utah State University and for 37 years taught project management at Baldwin-Wallace University.

Lyssa Adkins
Coach, Facilitator, Teacher and Inspirer
LyssaAdkins.com

The Building Blocks of Tomorrow’s Impactful Organization

The new ways of working have been diversifying—and fast. Leaders worldwide are looking for signs and indicators of what the impactful organization of the future would look like and what its success attributes would need to be. This group of world-renowned panelists cover the range of background areas needed to tackle this complex topic. They represent champions of strategy implementation, project management know-how, coaching, boards advisory, and agility in delivering work results. They will help us envision and map the course for the future-ready organization.

A multitude of critical building blocks will be explored during this interactive panel:

• The culture of tomorrow’s workplaces
• Skillsets for leading change initiatives and connecting with clear vision
• The adaptability attributes of experimentation, resilience, and fluid digitization
• The strategic role of project management in sustaining success
• How do leaders create the focused organization?
• Igniting passion across product delivery teams
• The reinventing of project management as the core for transforming tomorrow’s organizations

BIO:

Lyssa Adkins’ career is split into two eras: 14 years as a project manager and 15 years as an agilist. Even though she had all that experience prior to encountering agile, nothing prepared her for the power and simplicity of agile done well. As a PMO leader (twice!) Lyssa knows that the transition to agile can be rocky – she’s been through it herself.

Lyssa is an internationally recognized agile thought leader and speaker. Her book, Coaching Agile Teams, is still a top ranked book years after publication. She co-founded Agile Coaching Institute (ACI) which has equipped over 10,000 people in the must-have skills and mindset shifts of excellent agile coaching.

Since transitioning ACI to its new home at Accenture, Lyssa has focused on coaching transformation leaders and facilitating group work sessions that unknot the gnarly, multi-department impediments that agile reveals. As a certified organization systems coach and integral facilitator, and as a deeply experienced agilist, Lyssa possesses the skills to help organizations move through the difficult problems to benefit from the full promise of agile.

Deepa Prahalad
Author, Design Strategist

The Building Blocks of Tomorrow’s Impactful Organization

The new ways of working have been diversifying—and fast. Leaders worldwide are looking for signs and indicators of what the impactful organization of the future would look like and what its success attributes would need to be. This group of world-renowned panelists cover the range of background areas needed to tackle this complex topic. They represent champions of strategy implementation, project management know-how, coaching, boards advisory, and agility in delivering work results. They will help us envision and map the course for the future-ready organization.

A multitude of critical building blocks will be explored during this interactive panel:

• The culture of tomorrow’s workplaces
• Skillsets for leading change initiatives and connecting with clear vision
• The adaptability attributes of experimentation, resilience, and fluid digitization
• The strategic role of project management in sustaining success
• How do leaders create the focused organization?
• Igniting passion across product delivery teams
• The reinventing of project management as the core for transforming tomorrow’s organizations

BIO:

Deepa Prahalad is an author and innovation consultant. She has worked with start-ups and large multinationals, and co-authored the book, Predictable Magic: Unleash the Power of Design Strategy to Transform Your Business, which was selected by Fast Company as one of the “Best Design Books of the Year”. She writes frequently for Harvard Business Review, strategy+business, Businessweek and other magazines.

Deepa is an elected member of the International Academy of Management and was ranked #34 on the inaugural Thinkers 50 India list. She was recently selected by leadership guru Marshall Goldsmith into his “100 Coaches Program” from over 16,000 global applicants.

Deepa speaks on innovation and design strategy at leading companies and business schools such as Harvard and USC and mentors leading social entrepreneurs. She is active on several Advisory Boards including the Global Peter Drucker Forum, Mifos (financial inclusion), ArogyaWorld and ModRoof, an innovative, sustainable roofing company in India.

Deepa is also a Board Member for South Asian Art collection at the San Diego Museum of Art and designed the newly created House of India Museum in Balboa Park. She has a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez
Author, Professor & Thought Leader
Strategy Implementation Institute

The Building Blocks of Tomorrow’s Impactful Organization

The new ways of working have been diversifying—and fast. Leaders worldwide are looking for signs and indicators of what the impactful organization of the future would look like and what its success attributes would need to be. This group of world-renowned panelists cover the range of background areas needed to tackle this complex topic. They represent champions of strategy implementation, project management know-how, coaching, boards advisory, and agility in delivering work results. They will help us envision and map the course for the future-ready organization.

A multitude of critical building blocks will be explored during this interactive panel:

• The culture of tomorrow’s workplaces
• Skillsets for leading change initiatives and connecting with clear vision
• The adaptability attributes of experimentation, resilience, and fluid digitization
• The strategic role of project management in sustaining success
• How do leaders create the focused organization?
• Igniting passion across product delivery teams
• The reinventing of project management as the core for transforming tomorrow’s organizations

BIO:

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is a leading expert in project management and strategy implementation, the creator of concepts like the “Project Economy” and the “Hierarchy of Purpose.”

His work has been recognized by Thinkers50 with the prestigious award “Ideas into Practice.” He is the author of the recently published Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook, as well as Lead Successful Projects, The Project Revolution, and The Focused Organization.

Antonio has been teaching the value of project management to senior leaders for more than two decades at Duke CE, Instituto de Empresa, Solvay Business School, and Vlerick. Antonio has held executive positions at PricewaterhouseCoopers, BNP Paribas, and GlaxoSmithKline. Former Chairman of the Project Management Institute, he is the founder of Projects & Co and co-founder of the Strategy Implementation Institute. He is a member of Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches. You can follow Antonio through his LinkedIn Newsletter – Lead Projects Successfully or his website.

Dr. Al Zeitoun
Panel Moderator

The Building Blocks of Tomorrow’s Impactful Organization

The new ways of working have been diversifying—and fast. Leaders worldwide are looking for signs and indicators of what the impactful organization of the future would look like and what its success attributes would need to be. This group of world-renowned panelists cover the range of background areas needed to tackle this complex topic. They represent champions of strategy implementation, project management know-how, coaching, boards advisory, and agility in delivering work results. They will help us envision and map the course for the future-ready organization.

A multitude of critical building blocks will be explored during this interactive panel:

• The culture of tomorrow’s workplaces
• Skillsets for leading change initiatives and connecting with clear vision
• The adaptability attributes of experimentation, resilience, and fluid digitization
• The strategic role of project management in sustaining success
• How do leaders create the focused organization?
• Igniting passion across product delivery teams
• The reinventing of project management as the core for transforming tomorrow’s organizations

BIO:

Dr. Zeitoun is a Future of Work, business optimization, and operational performance excellence thought leader with global experiences in strategy execution. His experiences encompass leading organizations; delivering their Enterprise Digital and Business Transformation; guiding fitting frameworks implementations; and using his empathy, engineering insights, and collaboration strengths to successfully envision new business models and execute complex missions across diverse cultures globally.

In his position as the Executive Director for Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, Abu Dhabi, UAE, he was responsible for creating the strategy execution framework, achieving transformation benefits, governance excellence, and creating the data analytics discipline necessary for delivering on the $40B complex country energy mission roadmap.

At the McLean, USA HQ of Booz Allen Hamilton, Dr. Zeitoun strategically envisioned and customized digitally enabled EPMO advisory, mapped playbooks, and capability development for clients’ Billions of Dollars strategic initiatives. Furthermore, he led the firm’s Middle East North Africa Portfolio Management and Agile Governance Solutions.

With the International Institute for Learning, Dr. Zeitoun was a senior leader and global trainer and coach. He was instrumental in driving its global expansions, thought leadership, and operational excellence methodology to sense and shape dynamic ways of working across organizations worldwide. He speaks English, Arabic, and German and enjoys good food, travel, and volunteering.

Kursten Faller
Kursten Faller
Midgard

Surprises and Adventures in Virtual Project Management

Prior to 2020, project teams were slowly starting to virtually deliver projects and with the onset of COVID-19, this progress to virtual delivery has become more the norm rather than the exception. As teams are no longer able to work in traditional ways, there has been pressure to be agile and adapt quickly to ensure changing business outcomes are achieved.

Our project teams have had to adapt and apply the right approaches in this new environment. Discipline and agility in best practices application has become increasingly important to ensure project delivery is adapted and focused on delivering the benefits our organizations need to thrive. We will explore learnings that have come from this adventure as part of an overall journey to continue to successfully deliver projects virtually.

Key Takeaways:

• Learnings from transitioning to virtual project delivery
• How best practices improve virtual project delivery
• Opportunities to explore for continual improvement

BIO:

Kursten started his career working with some of the largest consulting firms in Canada. Despite their decades of experience and experienced personnel, these massive firms still struggled to deliver projects successfully. As he witnessed this time and time again, Kursten wondered: why is this such a difficult problem? With no obvious answer in front of him, he set out on a journey to find out why.

He began studying the top performers in the firms he worked with and took advantage of every opportunity to develop his knowledge. He got better at his craft, but still struggled to achieve the team performance he knew was possible. Finally, he realized he never would achieve that top performance where he was. Going to the next level required a level of agility and risk-taking the typical consulting firm simply didn’t possess.

So, it was time to break free from those rigid models and start anew. And thus, Midgard was born. Starting his own company allowed Kursten to experiment with new methodologies and new organizational structures. His team implemented and combined practices from PMI, Axelos, Agile Leadership, Prosci, Vital Smarts, and others to create a holistic set of best practices. Midgard’s team is encouraged to take risks and experiment with new perspectives and approaches because they’ve been given permission to fail. They all know that failure leads to growth.

Kursten has invested tens of thousands of dollars into the individuals on his team, teaching them the industry’s best practices. And the results are paying off. Midgard has established itself as a significant player in Saskatchewan’s consulting world and they’re now looking outward. With this foundation of skills, talent, and organizational structure, Midgard is primed for expansion.

Today, Midgard works with public and private organizations to help achieve their goals, from single projects to large-scale transformational change. They can help some of the most rigid and traditional organizations become more agile and progressive. Midgard’s clients achieve their strategic goals more predictably while allowing them to drive more value through their investments.

Paul Dandurand
Founder & CEO
Pie

Hybrid Agile/Waterfall Easy as Pie

Attend this session to get a quick introduction to the differences between Agile, Waterfall, and Hybrid project methods. Then learn how Pie, a visual project and process tool, takes a unique and simple approach to helping you go from waterfall to agile and using the two in the same project as a hybrid model.

Key takeaways include:

• Learn about the differences between waterfall, agile, and hybrid projects
• Learn how to set up a project structure for a hybrid projects
• See the unique approach that Pie takes with helping you migrate to hybrid agile and how to simplify a complex Scaled Agile SAFe model for your projects and programs

BIO:

Paul Dandurand is the founder and CEO of PieMatrix Inc (Pie). Paul started Pie to help businesses improve project results with repeatable processes combined with agile that improve over time while making it easy for team member adoption. Prior to Pie, he was co-founder of FocusFrame, a systems testing services firm, which was sold to Hexaware. Previously, he was with Siebel Systems (now Oracle) in Amsterdam. And he started his project management experience with Ernst & Young (EY) in San Francisco. Paul enjoys photography, learning the cello, skiing, and hiking. He earned a B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Ludwig Melik
CEO
Planbox

Gillis Jonk
Strategy and M&A
Kearney

The Next Paradigm Shift: From Agile to Future-Fit

The nature of work, new technologies, emerging trends, best practices and regulations are evolving exponentially and in unexpected ways. If the past two decades weren’t proof enough, then the last year alone reminded us that change doesn’t come knocking at our door: it bashes it down, leaving us little or no time at all to pivot accordingly.

Disruption comes in many ways, shapes and forms, but the result is always the same: a shock to the system. Now more than ever, organizations need to adopt a proactive mindset that empowers their employees, partners, and community to fearlessly navigate through turbulent times and into uncharted space at warp speed.

The Agile Manifesto revolutionized work and created an incredible following 20 years ago. Now, the “Future Fit Manifesto” proposes a new strategic approach to collaborative work that builds on the Agile movement. This manifesto provides expert guidance to organizations that want to take control of their own destiny to explore new possibilities, to seek new frontiers, and to boldly create new futures.

Join us on this one-of-a-kind journey to discover:

• What it means to be “Future-Fit”
• The values you must embrace to adopt a Future-Fit approach
• Insights from Gillis Jonk, Strategy and M&A at Kearny on how to practically apply the Future-Fit Manifesto values to your strategy and operations
• The steps your organization needs to take toward becoming Future-Fit

BIOS:

As a visionary thought leader and passionate technology advocate, Ludwig has the opportunity to work with some of the most innovative companies in the world every day. Ludwig is the founding author of the “Future-Fit Manifesto” and the CEO of Planbox, the world’s top-ranked agile innovation management platform, and IdeaConnection, a world-class open innovation expert solver network. Sharing enterprise innovation success stories, design thinking methodologies and agile work processes are some of his ardent talking points. With 20+ years of experience in the project portfolio management and innovation management market, Ludwig looks to help organizations positively transform their work culture to create sustainable growth and ongoing success by galvanizing employee engagement and by igniting creative ideation.

As a seasoned strategy consultant and business innovator, Gillis supports organizations and executives turning fundamental and disruptive change into competitive advantage. He works across industries and is an expert in business and value chain strategies, foresight, and helping build collective confidence to pursue audacious and game-changing plays at industry value chain scale.

Gillis is the author of numerous articles and co-author of The Future of Strategy: A Transformative Approach to Strategy for a World that Won’t Stand Still (McGraw-Hill, 2015), and Iconic – How to Create a Virtuous Circle of Success (LID, 2016).

Langdon Morris
CEO
InnovationLabs

Creating the Most Value with Project Management Metrics

This talk will provide guidance for participants who want to implement or improve the metrics they use for project management. The discussion will focus on important distinctions to keep in mind, including the key difference between a project which is tackling something brand new, vs. a project which is only execution oriented, as these will be best served by different types of metrics.

It will also look at qualitative versus quantitative metrics and describe when to use which, present a formula for Project Management Effectiveness with the associated metrics, and explain the new ISO 56000 innovation management standard.

Key Takeaways:

• A decision tree structure that shows how to think about project management metrics
• Project Leader Perspective vs. PMO Perspective
• Qualitative vs. Quantitative Metrics and the top ones to use
• The Project Management Effectiveness Formula
• Dashboards for the PMO
• The New ISO 56000 Innovation Management Standard

BIO:

Langdon is an award-winning innovator and world-renowned innovation consultant, best-selling author, and acclaimed keynote speaker. He is Senior Partner at InnovationLabs LLC, where he leads the firm’s global innovation consulting practice with a wonderful variety of clients in business, government, and non-profits.

Recent clients include Accor, Airbus, Bayer, France Telecom/Orange, ING, Ingersoll-Rand, Kaiser Pemanente, Leidos, L’Oreal, National Board of Medical Examiners, Stanford Health Care, Total Oil, UNICEF, US Navy, US Coast Guard, and many others.

Langdon is recognized as one the world’s leading thinkers and consultants on innovation, and his original and ground-breaking work has been adopted by corporations and universities on every continent.

He has completed his Master’s Degree in Urban Development at the London School of Economics in May 2021.

Mário Trentim
Sr. Trainer
IIL

P3O®: Are we doing the right things?

To stay relevant, Project Management Offices need to reinvent themselves, finding new ways to help organizations achieve strategic objectives through agile project execution. The rise of Agile poses new challenges to organizations in terms of governance, resource allocation, capacity planning, portfolio selection, and prioritization.

This presentation will teach you how to define and implement PMO functions and structures using AXELOS’ P3O® model (Portfolio, Programme, and Project Offices). You will also learn how to combine PRINCE2® and Agile to balance adaptability and governance.

Key Takeaways:

• Gain a greater understanding of the P3O model
• Learn from real-life scenarios how to adopt hybrid project management combining PRINCE2 and Agile

BIO:

Mario Trentim is passionate about volunteerism and has been helping nonprofit and professional communities since his youth. He has served and continues to serve at national and international Boards of Directors since 2014, including PMWB.org, PMIEF.org, ITAEX, and more.

Mr. Trentim is currently the Head of Governance and Performance at TRENTIM Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Partner company he founded in 2014. He expanded the company in Brazil and abroad, focused on project management services, citizen development, and digital transformation to customers in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Mr. Trentim is also CEO at the PMO Global Alliance, responsible for strategic planning, innovation, and global partnerships.

A former military officer (1999-2014), Mr. Trentim holds BSc and MSc degrees in Engineering, and he is concluding his Ph.D. in Project Management. He is also an MBA professor at top Business Schools, and he published nine books about project management in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

In 2014, he was the recipient of the prestigious PMIEF Harold Kerzner Award for his contributions to advancing the project management profession. Mr. Trentim also received the Meritorious Service Medal from the Air Force. Among other awards and recognition, Mr. Trentim is a Microsoft Regional Director and a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for five consecutive years.

Dr. Willis H. Thomas
Trainer and Speaker,
IIL

Reducing and Preventing Human Error in Projects

“To Err is Human.” This partial quote by Alexandre Pope reminds us that not all errors can be avoided. However, in some cases, the ripple effect caused by a human error can have huge consequences, resulting in billions or even trillions of dollars in lost revenue.

This is also true for projects. One small mistake, especially when it remains undetected, can lead to substandard project results. Therefore, reducing and preventing human error is critically important to project success. But how can this be done?

Key Takeaways

• Why it is critical to reduce and prevent human error
• What factors contribute to reducing and preventing human error
• Where you can find Resources on reducing and preventing human error
• How we can work better together to prevent and reduce human error
• Which techniques are useful for reducing and preventing human error

BIO:

Dr. Willis H. Thomas is a Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Performance Technologist (CPT) who has been involved in Human Resources and Training in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry since 2003. His experience includes working in the area of Drug Products (DP) and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) manufacturing in Kalamazoo, MI; Quality Assurance in Vaccines R&D in Pearl River, NY; Pharmacy Benefits Management in Irving, TX; Clinical Research in Arlington, VA; and generics and branded pharmaceuticals in Lake Forest, IL.

Willis actively publishes articles in journals, blogs and newspapers and speaks at pharmaceutical and life sciences conferences on an international basis on topics such as training and development, human error reduction and prevention, business of quality, data integrity, good documentation practices, evaluation (i.e., return on investment and return on quality), project management, risk management, change management, inspection readiness, and cybersecurity.

Since 2003, he has focused on enhancing the domain of Project Evaluation and has recognized global award-winning publications from PMI (Cleland Award) and APEX for Publication Excellence. He has been a trainer for IIL since 2009 and is a college professor in the Greater Chicago area.

Paul Dandurand

Founder & CEO
Pie

Hybrid Agile/Waterfall Easy as Pie

Attend this session to get a quick introduction to the differences between Agile, Waterfall, and Hybrid project methods. Then learn how Pie, a visual project and process tool, takes a unique and simple approach to helping you go from waterfall to agile and using the two in the same project as a hybrid model.

Key Takeaways Include:

• Learn about the differences between waterfall, agile, and hybrid projects
• Learn how to set up a project structure for a hybrid projects
• See the unique approach that Pie takes with helping you migrate to hybrid agile and how to simplify a complex Scaled Agile SAFe model for your projects and programs

BIO:

Paul Dandurand is the founder and CEO of PieMatrix Inc (Pie). Paul started Pie to help businesses improve project results with repeatable processes combined with agile that improve over time while making it easy for team member adoption. Prior to Pie, he was co-founder of FocusFrame, a systems testing services firm, which was sold to Hexaware. Previously, he was with Siebel Systems (now Oracle) in Amsterdam. And he started his project management experience with Ernst & Young (EY) in San Francisco. Paul enjoys photography, learning the cello, skiing, and hiking. He earned a B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Ludwig Melik

CEO
Planbox

The Next Paradigm Shift: From Agile to Future-Fit

Nature of work, new technologies, emerging trends, best practices and regulations are evolving exponentially and in unexpected ways. If the past two decades weren’t proof enough, then the last year alone reminded us that change doesn’t come knocking at our door: it bashes it down, leaving us little or no time at all to pivot accordingly.

Disruption comes in many ways, shapes and forms, but the result is always the same: a shock to the system. Now more than ever organizations need to adopt a proactive mindset that empowers their employees, partners, and community to fearlessly navigate through turbulent times and into uncharted space at warp speed.

The Agile Manifesto revolutionized work and created an incredible following 20 years ago. Now, “The Future Fit Manifesto” proposes a new strategic approach to collaborative work that builds on the Agile movement. This manifesto provides expert guidance to organizations that want to take control of their own destiny to explore new possibilities, to seek new frontiers, and to boldly create new futures.

Join us on this one-of-a-kind journey to discover:

• The steps your organization needs to take toward becoming Future-Fit

BIO:

As a visionary thought leader and passionate technology advocate, Ludwig has the opportunity to work with some of the most innovative companies in the world every day. Ludwig is the founding author of the Future-Fit Manifesto and the CEO of Planbox, the world’s top-ranked agile innovation management platform, and IdeaConnection, a world-class open innovation expert solver network. Sharing enterprise innovation success stories, design thinking methodologies and agile work processes are some of his ardent talking points. With 20+ years of experience in the project portfolio management and innovation management market, Ludwig looks to help organizations positively transform their work culture to create sustainable growth and ongoing success by galvanizing employee engagement and by igniting creative ideation.

Tom Kruse

Director, Worldwide Advocacy
Business Relationship Management Institute

How to become the Tchaikovsky of your organization

Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky is perhaps one of the most famous composers and conductors in history, known for his productions of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. What established him as one of the greats was his ability to draw the best from the people in his orchestras to make every project a masterpiece.

Like Tchaikovsky, you are in a unique role as a Project Manager to bring out the best in your partners within your organization. You can foster a culture of innovation and purpose by building great relationships across functions. In this presentation, you will learn how to become more strategic in your role through business relationship management, and how to evolve your organization by cultivating the relationships around you.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn how to become both tactical and strategic in your PM role
• Understand how to evolve the network of relationships in your organization
• Use specific tools to connect relationships to results
• Feel empowered to cultivate the relationships around you

BIO:

Tom Kruse is an aspiring grateful leader who believes in the power of trusting and authentic relationships. Having traveled to over 25 countries, he has witnessed how every single one of us is connected by the same basic human needs. He currently works for Business Relationship Management Institute, cultivating relationships to help organizations satisfy their purpose. He has written and edited over sixty tactical & thought-piece articles covering a wide array of topics including Emotional Intelligence, Business Relationship Management, AI, DevOps, Agile, and human connection. In his current position, he leads a group of professional leaders in the development of Relationshipism at BRM Institute.

Keith Wilson

Senior Trainer/Consultant
International Institute for Learning (IIL)

AstraZeneca – Embarking on an Agile Journey

The term ‘Agile Transformation’ is commonly used in many teams and organizations who are looking to become more adaptable in their work. But how to go about this transformation is a tough question.

Join AstraZeneca as they embark on their Agile Journey, in Part 1 of this exclusive series. The session will be followed by a Q&A with the speakers.

What You Will Learn:

• How to assess the current Project Management situation
• The expected benefits and potential challenges of transitioning to Agile
• An overview of different Agile practices
• Define a strategy for the Agile Journey

BIO:

Keith Wilson (IIL) has over 25 years of successful coaching, training, management, and consulting experience globally with over 100 happy clients. He has extensive Agile Training/Coaching experience and makes Agile work for his clients.

Pammy Subramony

Associate Group Director, Head of Submissions & Operations
Clinical & Quantitative Pharmacology (CPQP), R&D, AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca – Embarking on an Agile Journey

The term ‘Agile Transformation’ is commonly used in many teams and organizations who are looking to become more adaptable in their work. But how to go about this transformation is a tough question.

Join AstraZeneca as they embark on their Agile Journey, in Part 1 of this exclusive series. The session will be followed by a Q&A with the speakers.

What You Will Learn:

• How to assess the current Project Management situation
• The expected benefits and potential challenges of transitioning to Agile
• An overview of different Agile practices
• Define a strategy for the Agile Journey

BIO:

Dr. Pammy Subramony (AstraZeneca) has 15 plus years of experience and leadership from early development to commercialization managing programs in biologics, device combination products and small molecules ranging from start-up to large pharmaceutical companies.

WHAT PMI COURSES DOES IIL CURRENTLY OFFER AND IN WHAT MODALITY?

IIL offers PMP, PMI-ACP, CAPM, PBA, PfMP courses in Traditional, Virtual and On-Demand settings.

WHERE CAN I LOCATE INFORMATION ON COURSE DURATION, PREREQUISITES, PRE-WORK AND EXAM INFORMATION FOR A SPECIFIC PMI WORKSHOP?

The course descriptions found on our website contain all of the needed information.

WHAT IS INCLUDED IN THE PRICING?

Course materials include a workbook and practice questions; supplemental materials are available for purchase.

HOW ARE COURSE MATERIALS SENT TO ME?

Depending on the course and the modality, you will either receive hard copy workbooks or access to an electronic download.

CAN I TAKE A PMI CERTIFICATION WORKSHOP AND NOT TAKE THE EXAM?

Yes. You will receive a certificate of completion if you take the IIL course but must register through PMI for the exam to earn the certification.

WILL I RECEIVE A CERTIFICATE OF COMPLETION AT THE END OF THE WORKSHOP?

Yes, a Certificate of Completion will be issued after the course.

WHAT IS IIL’S PMP GUARANTEE?

You must attend the entire program and meet PMI’s requirements for becoming a PMP.
You must take the PMP Exam within 30 days after finishing the IIL program.
If you fail the Exam you are asked to email your status to us in order to be eligible to take IIL’s 12-hour PMP Prep course including a live coach FREE OF CHARGE or to negotiate for a refund based on all accepted paperwork. Documents to send to IIL are:
- Date that you completed the IIL certificate program (proof will be needed that you participated in all sessions)
- Date that you sat for the Exam
- Status report showing that your Exam Score
When taking IIL’s 12-hour PMP Prep course you must take the Exam within 30 days to continue to be eligible for a full refund of the 35-hour PMP Certification Prep course.

WHO ADMINISTERS THE PMI CERTIFICATION EXAMS?

PMI administers the exams.

WHAT IS THE STRUCTURE OF THE NEW PMP EXAM?

The new exam is comprised of:

180 questions (the previous exam was 200) but the same number of questions will be scored
230 minutes to complete the exam
One additional break for a total of two 10-minute breaks for computer-based tests. No scheduled breaks for paper-based exams.
Questions will be a combination of multiple-choice, multiple responses, matching, hotspot and limited fill-in-the-blank. See prototype questions to learn more.

WHAT ARE THE GENERAL EXAM FACTS FOR PMI WORKSHOPS?

The exams are taken through PMI. Participants apply, register and pay PMI directly

HOW LONG DO I HAVE TO TAKE THE EXAM?

Your PMI certification application is valid for one (1) year from the date of approval. If you allow your eligibility to lapse, you must re-apply

CAN I TAKE THE EXAM AT A LOCAL TESTING CENTER?

All PMI exams are offered by Pearson VUE Testing Centers. Most PMI exams are also available online. Please see here for additional information.

WHAT ARE THE SPECIFIC DETAILS OF MY EXAM?

This information can be found at www.pmi.org/

HOW DO I RECEIVE MY CERTIFICATION FROM PMI?

Your certificate will be mailed to you by PMI. You should receive your certificate package within 6-8 weeks from the date you pass the exam.

HOW DO I APPLY FOR PMI CERTIFICATION

You can apply on the PMI website.

For tips on completing the PMP application, watch this video

David Nour
CEO
The Nour Group, Inc.

Curve Benders: How Strategic Relationships Can Power Your Non-linear Growth in the Future of Work

In the future of how we’ll work, live, play, and give, 15 Forces will create dramatic headwind, tailwind, or turbulence in our lives and careers. Learning their relevance is no longer optional; it’s a necessity.

For most people, learning is linear – they learn, then they apply. We believe when it comes to relationships, a different lens is needed. Time and again, people enter our lives that dramatically alter our lives’ direction and destination. I call enablers of this adaptive and accelerated non-linear growth Curve Benders.

So, who are your Curve Benders, and how do you find them? More importantly, how do you become one in the lives of others? And how can the Curve Bending mindset unlock the next level of enterprise value creation and profitable growth?

Join bestselling author, senior leadership advisor, executive educator and coach David Nour as he shares key insights from his 11th book, Curve Benders, at the intersection of the future of work, strategic relationships, and non-linear growth.

Key Takeaways

Understand the 15 Forces that will impact the future of how we’ll work, live, play, and give.
Evaluate Your Personal Market Value and the key investments you must make to enhance it in 2021 and beyond.
Apply the Growth Grid to address your most complex innovation challenges and growth opportunities.
Get introduced to the Path to your Curve Benders and Curve Benders Roadmap (tools) to accelerate your professional relevancy amid constant disruptions.

BIO:

A senior leadership/board advisor, educator, executive coach, and bestselling author, David Nour is internationally recognized as the leading expert on applications of strategic relationships in profitable growth, sustained innovation, and lasting change. The author of eleven books, including bestsellers Relationship Economics® (Wiley), and Co-Create (St. Martin’s Press), as well as the forthcoming Curve Benders (Wiley, 2021), Nour serves as a trusted advisor to global clients and coaches corporate leaders. He is an adjunct professor at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management and was named to the Global Gurus Top 30 Leadership Professionals list. A Forbes Leadership contributor on the Future of Work, and an Inc. contributor on Relationship Economics, Nour’s unique insights have been featured in a variety of prominent publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Huffington Post Business, Entrepreneur, and Knowledge@Wharton. He’s also the host of the popular Curve Benders podcast.

Born in Iran, Nour immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager with $100, limited family ties and no fluency in English. He graduated from Georgia State University with a bachelor’s degree in business management and went on to earn an Executive MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. He resides in Atlanta, GA, with his family. Learn more at www.NourGroup.com.

Bertrand Rajon
Head of Executive Leadership
Nestlé

Innovative Leadership: Ecosystems and Disruption in 5 Lessons

As we advance along the journey of transforming our company, we realise that more factors are at play than one may have initially thought.

The playfield has indeed widened, more actors are to be taken into account and this adds a true complexity to our business.

In this keynote, Bertrand Rajon, Head of Executive Leadership Education at Nestlé, will review the shift that has happened between generating innovation and being innovative through the lens of leadership. Business ecosystems and disruption can only be handled successfully if we transform our leadership approach, specifically towards our teams.

Outcomes include:

Grow your ability to perceive early signals of transformation
Capture the spirit of ecosystems in the making and adjacent development
Disrupt your own business at the edge and build it as a spearhead
Create a root and wings leadership mindset in your company
Shift from innovation to innovative

BIO:

As a long-term Nestlé employee, Bertrand Rajon has covered various fields of activities ranging from business management to executive education. Over a span of more than 30 years, he has accumulated significant experience and became the refence person within his company when it comes to business acceleration, inner disruption and executive leadership development.

Erica Dhawan
Speaker and Author
Cotential Group

Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance

During this unprecedented time of change and uncertainty, we are collaborating faster and more often than ever before. We feel like we’re connected – but are we really? In this interactive keynote, collaboration expert Erica Dhawan teaches you the art and science of Digital Body Language, the key to
productivity and collaboration in the modern workplace. This virtual experience will help you replace the challenges of digital work and build a culture of maniacal clarity that fosters the highest performing teams and relationships.

Outcomes include:

Learn the digital body language signals and cues that you are broadcasting (even if you don’t intend to)
Show others you understand their feelings and hear their ideas — even in emails, conference calls, video meetings, and texts
Build your brand, find your voice and show presence anytime anywhere
Develop digital communication norms across teams
Grow trust and connection within and across teams, no matter the distance

BIO:

Erica Dhawan is the world’s foremost expert, author and speaker on digital body language and connectional intelligence. She teaches 21st-century collaboration skills and behaviors for a global, virtual, multi-generational and matrixed workplace. She is the CEO of Cotential, a training company and
the co-author of the bestselling book Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence and the forthcoming Digital Body Language.

Jay Samit
Author and Disruption & Innovation Expert

Future Proofing You: Twelve Truths for Creating Opportunity

Jay Samit, one of the world’s leading authorities or disruption and innovation, explains how to take control of your career and create opportunity in this uncertain, post-pandemic world.

Building upon the principles in his books Disrupt You! and Future Proofing You, Samit explains the 12 truths needed to succeed and how he used them to mentor a millennial from welfare to self-made millionaire in one year.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

How to identify an idea and fill a void in the market
How to build a virtual company or new division with little or no capital
Ways for your company to get a piece of a trillion-dollar opportunity bigger than mobile
How to harness the three primary fears of others to generate more sales

BIO:

International bestselling author Jay Samit is a dynamic entrepreneur and intrapreneur who is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on disruption and innovation. Described by Wired magazine as “having the coolest job in the industry,” he raises hundreds of millions of dollars for startups, advises Fortune 500 firms, transforms entire industries, revamps government institutions, and for three decades continues to be at the forefront of global trends.

The former Independent Vice Chairman of Deloitte Consulting, Samit helped grow pre-IPO companies such as LinkedIn, been a Nasdaq company CEO, held senior management roles at EMI, Sony and Universal Studios, pioneered breakthrough advancements in mobile, ecommerce, digital distribution, and spatial reality that are used by billions of consumers every day. Called the “guru for the entire industry” by Variety, his list of partners and associates reads like a who’s who list of innovators, including: Bill Gates, President Bill Clinton, Pope John Paul II, Steven Spielberg, Steve Jobs, Reid Hoffman, David Geffen, Sir Richard Branson, and Paul Allen.

Samit’s previous book, Disrupt You! Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive in the Era of Endless Innovation (MacMillan 2015), is currently published in twelve languages. He has also written for such publications as Fortune, Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal.

A sought-after conference speaker and consultant, Samit provides disruptive solutions for such corporate clients as Adobe, American Express, AT&T, Best Buy, Coca-Cola, Disney, Ford, Google, GE, IBM, Intel, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and Visa and dozens more.

Laine Joelson Cohen
Director, Citi Learning
Citi

Want to Drive Innovation? Take a Coach Approach!

Are you struggling to get your team to innovate? Is there a lack of new ideas on your team? Do you want
to increase autonomy and empowerment of your team? Taking a coach approach may be exactly what
you need.
This session will show you how to empower your team to solve problems and innovate, and it will help
you ensure diverse perspectives are being surfaced. We will explore specific tactics and questions you
can use to unlock others; whether in your own team, or with peers and clients.
This session will give you:

A simple coaching framework to get started
Powerful questions to unlock creativity and empower others
Tips for boosting your active listening skills
Time back in your day

BIO:

For over 25 years, Laine has worked at Citi, global Fortune 50 Financial Services Company, leading teams across a variety of businesses and functions. Laine is the North America Director of Leadership and Performance Solutions for Citi where she also runs Business Relationship Management.

Laine is also an Executive Coach and was named to Marshall Goldsmith “100 Coaches”. She speaks both at Citi and externally about leadership, coaching, and thriving in large complex organizations.

Interviewed in: The Coaching Habit Podcast, Work and Life Podcast, Inc Magazine

Laine holds an M.B.A. in Human Resources Management from the Zicklin School of Business – Baruch College and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Connecticut.

VIDEO:

Tiffani Bova
Global Growth and Innovation Evangelist
Salesforce

Growth is a Thinking Game

The one thing about growth is it is never one thing. Growth is a thinking game. To achieve it, we must find new and different ways to engage our employees and our customers and ignite a beginner’s mind that is open to new ideas and ways of doing things. The pandemic was a black swan event that put an end to business as usual. In a matter of hours, days and weeks, the impact of COVID-19 forced entrepreneurs, leaders and businesses of all sizes to reimagine the future and build a resilient response to the crisis—finding new ways to stay connected and work together to create and uncover opportunity, as well as solve challenges locally and globally while maintaining and elevating the experience for employees and customers.

In this keynote, Tiffani motivates attendees to get comfortable being uncomfortable, think forward, take action and find new, different and better ways to grow together now and in the next future. Key Takeaway:

Growth requires flexibility to change – even pandemic-sized change.
Growth is never just one thing.
Employees and customers must change too.

BIO:

Tiffani Bova is the chief growth evangelist at Salesforce and the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book GROWTH IQ: Get Smarter About the Choices that Will Make or Break Your Business. Bova has been named to the latest Thinkers50’s list of the world’s top management thinkers and is a welcomed guest on Bloomberg, BNN, Cheddar, MSNBC, and Yahoo Finance, among others. She also contributes her thinking to publications including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Diginomica, Quora, Thrive, Rotman School of Management and Duke Dialogue Review. She is a change maker who’s thought-provoking and forward-thinking insights have made her a frequent guest on a variety of industry-leading podcasts and live broadcasts.

VIDEO:

Ori Schibi
Trainer & Consultant
IIL

Distributed leadership for the new world

As the dust is starting to settle on the new ways we conduct business, and ourselves as a result of Covid – we continue to play catch up with the new reality, while new challenges continue to emerge. 

Covid has introduced a perfect storm with multiple sets of challenges that all hit at once and in the strongest possible way (social, external, organizational). Yet we are now facing another curve ball – the need to look at leadership skills on a spectrum – from “traditional” leadership as we know it, through virtual leadership – and the new type – the distributed leadership.  

Distributed leadership will emerge as a discipline to explore, develop and grow, along with the following primary and evolving needs:  

Accountability – at all levels  
Proactiveness – in communication and expectations management
Share, delegate and distribute some of the leadership-related actions and attributes 
Encourage, delegate, and foster the development of “local” leaders  Properly empower others to lead  
Share, delegate and distribute some of the leadership-related actions and attributes

This dynamic and interactive session takes participants through a series of concepts and idea that will help them improve their ability to engage and collaborate their virtual teams, while maintaining and even improving productivity and value-creation.  

Key Takeaways:

Realize new and emerging needs for effective leadership in the new world 
Apply key concepts of distributed leadership and effective communication in a virtual and a hybrid environment  
Proactively engage and empower stakeholders and team members to improve traction, results and accountability  
Reduce the amount of noise and redundancies in communication and overall – to enhance the ability to address and solve issues and problems effectively

BIO:

Ori Schibi, has over 25 years’ experience providing practical new ways of leading sustainable change through ambiguous conditions, managing projects and programs, and helping organizations maximize the benefits from agile. As a visionary thought leader, Ori introduces practical ideas in areas related to project sponsorship, PMO, connecting change initiatives to projects, and collaboration – within and across projects. Ori has been engaged in ensuring that agile rollouts take place in the context of the organizational change they introduce – to ensure alignment and success.

Most recently, he has been consulted as a thought-leader in virtual and distributed leadership, cultural sensitivity and effectively helping organizations move toward distributed workplaces.

Large to mid-sized organizations (including Telecoms, Financial Services, Pharmaceuticals, Entertainment and Aerospace) have benefited from Ori’s innovative approach to value creation, efficiencies, collaboration, and focusing on customer satisfaction (including Disney, Marriott, Phillips, Pfizer and Amex). Ori also has extensive international public service experience at multiple level (all levels of government in Canada, NYS-DMV, Social Security Administration, and UNHCR).

Ori is the author of four books. He has developed a line of dynamic and innovative workshops and programs and has led sessions, delivered keynotes and taught thousands of participants in multiple settings. He is known for his unique, dynamic and capturing style, and for his high impact, real life; easy to understand examples

VIDEO:

Kaihan Krippendorff
CEO
Outthinker Strategy Network

Driving Innovation from Within: A Guide for Employees and Organizational Leaders

“Innovation” brings to mind the maverick entrepreneur who quits their job, at unimaginable odds, to build a business on their own. But this entrepreneurial story is a myth. As a successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO, Kaihan Krippendorff argues that intrapreneurs – employees who incubate new businesses within corporations – have had a far greater impact on the world. Nearly all of the most transformative innovations over the past three decades, from e-mail and the Internet to DNA sequencing and MRI scans, were introduced by employees who did not quit their jobs but instead took the challenge of innovating from within.

Drawing on five years of in-depth research of hundreds of successful innovators and Intrapreneurial Intensity, as well as insights from thought leaders, C-suite leaders, business unit leaders, and front-line employees, Kaihan will share exclusive insights from his book, Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs (Columbia University Press, 2019).

Kaihan will unveil the most critical internal focus areas for driving innovation and moving your organization forward into the future. He will share specific tools, frameworks and techniques used by successful innovators to manage and unlock the value of employees’ ideas to increase corporate innovation levels and deliver bottom-line results. Participants will have actionable next steps to transform their organization by testing and scaling fresh ideas that generate value and growth. They will leave feeling inspired and empowered, ready to take on the future.

In this inspiring keynote, you will learn about:

The IN-OVATE Framework
The seven barriers of internal innovation and how to overcome them
The six characteristics of Internal Innovators
The seven steps to build an agile innovation team
How to disrupt your competition without disrupting your business
What it takes to lead an innovative organization and drive transformation
How to shift your organizational mindset and culture
How to build a wave of internal support for growth, innovation and creativity by reinforcing the idea that innovation is possible, attainable, and ultimately actionable

BIO:

Kaihan Krippendorff has made a commitment to helping organizations and individuals thrive in today’s era of fast-paced disruptive technological change.

He began his career with McKinsey & Company before founding the growth strategy and innovation consulting firm Outthinker, whose growth strategies and innovations have generated over $2.5B in revenue for many of the world’s most recognizable companies including BNY Mellon, Citibank, L’Oréal, Microsoft, and Viacom. He is a best-selling author of five books, most recently the Edison Award nominated Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs.

Kaihan is a member of the prestigious Thinkers50 radar group – A global selection of the top 30 management thinkers in the world to look out for. Thinkers50 also recognized Kaihan as one of the 8 most influential innovation thought leaders in the world considering him for a Distinguished Achievement Award in Innovation – given to the person in the world that has contributed the most to the world’s understanding of innovation in the past two years.

Amidst his dizzying schedule of keynote speeches, consulting projects, ongoing research and writing, Kaihan still finds time to teach at business schools throughout the US and internationally (including NYU, FIU, and UA). Regularly featured in major business media outlets, Kaihan is an advisory board member of multiple national and international companies.

VIDEO:

Maria Rivera
Associate Director
New York University, The School of Professional Studies

The Reality of Extended Reality

This presentation provides an introduction to Extended Reality (XR), which includes Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). As the technology advances, organizations have found practical ways to apply XR with all kinds of objectives. In Talent Development for example, VR can eliminate risk and safety concerns, provide scalability, offer the opportunity to gain practical experience, remove time and travel costs, and more.

Attendees of this presentation will:

Gain an understanding of VR and AR
Learn what equipment is required to utilize VR and AR
Learn how organizations are applying VR tools

BIO:

Maria Rivera has over ten years of Management, Sales and Technology Training, Project Management, Web Development, Video Production, and Training & Development (asynchronous and synchronous) experience in Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, and professional service organizations. She led strategic initiatives at The Steven L. Newman Real Estate Institute – Baruch College as the Associate Director and at CUNY School of Professional Studies/ACS Project as a Deputy Director. She is currently at NYU the School of Professional Studies as the Associate Director of the Management and Systems Graduate Degree Program and manages the Management and Technology Noncredit Portfolio. She is also a standing committee member of the NYU SPS Inclusion, Diversity, Belonging, Equity, and Accessibility (IDBEA) Committee. She is a Training and Development Consultant for DigitalSummit.tv. Maria has produced a variety of blended digital media training solutions for various organizations/industries and has spoken at conferences including the Trenton Computer Festival regarding Virtual Reality/New Media. She is also the co-organizer of the XR Learning and Training Meetup.

She is a member of the Association for Talent Development (NYC and Northern NJ), the Project Management Institute (PMI), and the National Speaker Association. She believes in the “Everyone wants to be Magnificent” philosophy and has enjoyed training hundreds of adult learners successfully over the years. Giving back to the community is something that she always makes time to do. She participates in HISPA.org’s Role Model Program and helped design an App Development Training Program for middle school and high school students. She has also spoken at AT&T’s HACEMOS Leadership conference, HISPA’s Youth Conferences, Trenton Computer Festivals, mLearning conference, and at the 2019 ACE Women’s Network Women of Color Conference at Vaughn College

She received her BA from Lehman College and her MA in Adult Education & Training from the University of Phoenix. She also recently earned a Data Visualization Certificate from NYUSPS.

VIDEO:

Birgit Maillefaud
HR & Business Executive

Leading Corporate Transformation – Navigating in Ever-Evolving Waters

Leading a corporate transformation project critical to a company’s future success is a challenge in itself – and even more so during a global health and economic crisis. Success will come from building and enabling a high performing team, keeping them focused and adapting to the continuously evolving environment. We will look at lessons learned from a compelling case: the creation of a new global headquarters for a Fortune 500 company, involving mass hiring and relocation, new ways of working and culture change.

Key Takeaways:

The power of a high-performing project team
Compassionate leadership – Building trust builds bridges when leading remote teams
Focusing on outcomes and smart communication makes a difference

BIO:

As a former VP of HR for Global Organization Transformation at Coty and Business & HR executive at P&G, Birgit combines both commercial perspective and broad-based HR experience in large corporations, with a recent focus on organization transformation in the digital era. Her belief is that building trust through compassionate leadership is the new currency for success. Birgit’s desire as a leader is to achieve results while helping people grow in a way that is meaningful to them.

VIDEO:

David Hutchens
Author & Consultant
The Storytelling Leader

Telling Stories that Inspire: Create Engagement and Belief so People will Act

In this active presentation, participants will encounter the deep and fascinating body of knowledge around organizational narrative. This isn’t about performance or building your “public speaking” skills. It is a recognition that story is a strategic act: Which stories should leaders tell? It begins with selection, because when you tell the right story at the right time the results can be transformational.

David Hutchens will introduce participants to storytelling through a lens of change management. They will discover the three stories they should be telling now in order to move the system and engage their team in a context of extreme uncertainty.

Attendees of this session will:

Explore how stories of continuity, novelty, and transition are needs that every organizational system has.
Hear specific examples of how other leaders and organizations are telling these stories.
Identify some of the “narrative assets” (the value-holding stories) that they can start telling right away!

BIO:

David Hutchens has been exploring the intersection of narrative, leadership, and complex systems change for more than 20 years. A bestselling author, business writer and learning designer, he creates solutions for Accenture, Harvard Business Review, L’Oreal, FedEx, The Coca-Cola Company, Wal-Mart, IBM, The US Olympic Committee, and many others. His partnerships include a recurring instructor position with the globally renowned INSEAD School of Business in Fontainebleau, France.

He speaks to organizations and leadership teams all around the world on the topic of storytelling as an organizational capacity. His new book is Story Sprint, due Spring 2021. It will be his tenth book. He is also the author of Circle of the 9 Muses: A Storytelling Field Guide for Innovators and Meaning Makers, (Wiley & Sons, 2015).

He created the innovative Leadership Story Deck — an innovative, card-based resource for developing narrative driven communications. The popular resource is now available on Amazon.com.

He is a founding partner of the international forum called Story the Future, which explores how narrative leads to deep system transformation in organizations and societies.

He has served as an executive speechwriter or ghostwriter for global thought leaders such as Stephen M.R. Covey, and the CEO of The Coca-Cola Company.

VIDEO:

Camella Barnes
VP, Strategic Initiatives and Execution
Goldman Sachs

Staying Human and Happy in a Virtual World

Let’s face it – while co-located, it is easier to connect with others. When dispersed, there needs to be a concerted effort towards team alignment and successful outcomes. A leader’s responsibility is to provide structure, guidance, and a framework. However, studies show that the way you measure a healthy and happy work environment isn’t the external governance guardrails, but it’s by the motivation employees feel. If we can create environments that ensure our remote employees are engaged, confident, and motivated, we will increase our ability to be competitive and deliver successful outcomes to our customers.

In this session, we will build a virtual house of team collaboration and discuss strategies and supporting statistics to help you and your teams stay human and happy in a virtual world.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Learn how to influence talent retention in spite of physical location separation
Understand the social and economic benefits of making employees feel valued
Practice activities that can be deployed to drive up retention & connectivity, while working remotely

BIO:

In her over 20 years of program management experience, Camella Barnes has been leading global teams and implementing large scale, new product offerings. Most recently, she led the implementation of Marcus Invest, a digital investment platform. Camella has also served as a founding member of launching Personal Loans, Apple Card, Derivatives Clearing Services, and various Prime Services products. Camella has a proven track record of turning a ‘north star’ idea into successful systemic solutions, developing high performing, award-winning teams, and creating products used by millions. She has helped build new organizations from zero to 1000+ people across multiple strategic locations while delighting customers and delivering business outcomes.

Camella’s secret sauce towards influencing business success is a mix of communication and investment in people. She focuses on management routines which showcase successes, solve blockers, and drive accountability – all in support of the overarching strategic Objectives and Key Results through agile delivery and continuous improvement. By inspiring and acknowledging talent and making people feel valued, she builds happier teams. Camella knows firsthand that happier teams outperform unhappy teams by 3 times, and she looks forward to sharing her success in creating and empowering successful virtual teams with the audience.

Richard Kasperowski
High-Performance Teams Expert

High-Performance Teams: Core Protocols for Psychological Safety and EI

Want awesome teams that build great products? Great teams don’t happen by accident. And they don’t have to take a long time to build.

In this session, Richard lays out the case for Continuous / Extreme Teaming. Join in a flight of fun learning activity-sets that will give you a taste of team awesomeness and how to start when you go back to work.

Richard builds on the work of Jim and Michele McCarthy, Google, Bruce Tuckman, Gamasutra, Standish Group, Peter Drucker, and Melvin Conway. His learning activity-sets activities are short games, using elements from improvisational theater, The Core Protocols, Extreme Programming, and more.

Who should attend? Anyone who wants to create a great team and build great products. You’ll leave having embodied the essential elements of accelerated continuous team-building and maintenance.

For those who want to get the most out of the session and activities, Richard suggests that you get a copy of his book, The Core Protocols: A Guide to Greatness, read with a marker pen, and come with questions about who, when, and where to use a protocol.

BIO:

Richard Kasperowski is an author, teacher, speaker, and coach focused on team building high-performance teams. Richard is the author two books: High-Performance Teams: The Foundations and The Core Protocols: A Guide to Greatness, as well as the forthcoming book High-Performance Teams: Core Protocols for Psychological Safety and Emotional Intelligence. He leads clients in building and maintaining high-performance teams that get great results using the Core Protocols, Agile, and Open Space Technology. Richard created and teaches the course Agile Software Development at Harvard University. Learn more and subscribe to Richard’s newsletter at www.kasperowski.com.

Dr. Linda Hill
Professor
Harvard Business School

Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation

Dr. Linda Hill presented this session at IPM Day 2018.

What does it take to build an organization that can innovate in today’s global economy and embrace new technologies? What kind of leadership is needed? How can you select and develop the kind of leadership talent needed? These are questions Linda Hill has been researching along with among others, the former SVP of Technology for Pixar. She will share examples from her book of leaders who have learned how to cultivate “collective genius” and provide a framework for creating organizations in which people are willing and able to innovate.

BIO:

Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and chair of the Leadership Initiative. Hill is regarded as one of the top experts on leadership. Hill is the co-author of Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation, co-founder of Paradox Strategies, and co-creator of the Innovation Quotient. She was named by Thinkers50 as one of the top ten management thinkers in the world in 2013 and received the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2015.

Hill’s research focuses on implementing global strategies and leading innovation; building innovative organizations and ecosystems; developing leaders for innovation; and the role of the board in governing innovation. She is the author of highly-regarded books and articles on leadership, including her latest book Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation (Harvard Business Review Press 2014). Collective Genius was named by Business Insider as one of “The 20 Best Business Books” in 2014 and received the Gold Medal for Leadership, Axiom Business Book Award. In 2015, Hill, along with her co-authors, received the first Warren Bennis Prize for the Harvard Business Review article “Collective Genius,” based on the book. Hill is also the co-author of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives of Becoming a Great Leader, noted by the Wall Street Journal as one of the “Five Business Books to Read for your Career in 2011” and author of Becoming a Manager: How New Mangers Master the Challenges of Leadership (2nd edition). Her books are available in multiple languages. Hill has authored or co-authored numerous Harvard Business Review articles, including “Where Will We Find Tomorrow’s Leaders,” “Winning the Race for Talent in Emerging Markets,” and “Are You a High Potential?” She is a contributor to the HBS Press Pocket Mentor series Managing Up, Hiring, Becoming a New Manager, and Negotiating Outcomes.

Hill has chaired numerous HBS Executive Education programs, including the Young Presidents’ Organization Presidents’ Seminar and the High Potentials Leadership Program, and Leading and Building a Culture of Innovation. She was course-head during the development of the new Leadership and Organizational Behavior MBA required course.

Dr. Diane Hamilton
CEO, Author, and Business Behavior & Culture Expert
Tonerra

How to Build Curiosity: The Key to Improving Engagement, Innovation, and Productivity

Dr. Diane Hamilton presented this session at IPM Day 2019

Employees can be more innovative, engaged and productive by improving their natural curiosity, but they must be trained to do so and be rewarded for their efforts. Harvard Business Review found that while 83 percent of C-suite executives believe they encourage curiosity, only 52 percent of employees feel they are rewarded for their curiosity—and are therefore less likely to provide innovative ideas to the organization. HR professionals and leaders can benefit from recent groundbreaking research discoveries regarding what affects curiosity. Once organizations recognize and overcome the four factors that hold people back from being curious, they can develop training and development plans to unleash it.

BIO:

Dr. Diane Hamilton is the Founder and CEO of Tonerra, and Co-Founder of DIMA Innovations, which are consulting and media-based businesses. She is a nationally syndicated radio host, keynote speaker, and the former MBA Program Chair at the Forbes School of Business. She has authored multiple books which are required in universities around the world, including Cracking the Curiosity Code: The Key to Unlocking Human Potential, and The Power of Perception: Eliminating Boundaries to Create Successful Global Leaders. She is the creator of the Curiosity Code Index® assessment, which is the first and only assessment that determines the factors that inhibit curiosity and the Perception Power Index, which determines the factors that impact the perception process. Her groundbreaking work helps organizations improve innovation, engagement, and productivity. Thinkers50 Radar chose her as one of the top minds in management and leadership. Her work has been endorsed by some of the most respected names in leadership.

Ainat Beniaminovitz, MD FACC
Cardiologist
Columbia Doctors

The Future of Medicine

This session focuses on the innovations in medicine and how this industry (much like humanity) is evolving. New technology in the computing arena, the biosensor realm and genetics, and the world of “omics” is converging to deliver much more precise care. Although still in its infancy, the worlds are intersecting and advancing at warp speed.

Key Takeaways:

How medicine is evolving in its ability to diagnose and treat diseases more precisely
How artificial intelligence is being used to uncover ailments before our current technology can even identify their existence
What are “Omics” and how are they advancing healthcare
The biosensors revolution & what it means to the future of healthcare diagnosis and delivery

BIO:

Ainat Beniaminovitz is a board-certified cardiologist practicing in NY as part of Columbia Doctors and is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia. After training at the College of Physicians and surgeons at Columbia University, she completed her residency and fellowship at Columbia and stayed on to be an attending in heart failure and cardiac transplantation where she published extensively including lead author in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. Her focus later shifted to preventive cardiology and her passion is maximizing the use of new technology to further advance precision diagnostics and management. After all, as we first learned as kids, not every shoe fits every Cinderella (nor should it)!

Steven Pae
Executive Director
Ascend

The Future of Leadership: Introducing a new leadership model that embraces power skills, diversity and inclusion and community service

Power Skills (EQ) are so important in a numbers and technology-driven world. Where technology, automation and AI has infiltrated all aspects of our personal and professional lives, power skills continue to not only be our differentiator but essential for us to learn, grow and connect.

This session will focus on specific power skills of awareness, empathy and relationships which power our new leadership model, combined with diversity and inclusion presence. These skills can be put into practice in the professional, non-profit and educational space to allow the individual to move beyond the numbers and succeed in whatever we pursue. We will explore how these skills have become even more important during the pandemic, and the new future of work and learning.

Key Takeaways:

How Power Skills (EQ) have become more important and necessary in the new pandemic world and will continue to be necessary post pandemic.
Why Power Skills will be needed throughout your career even more than ever due to the future of work
Being a leader is not just about being diversity and inclusion aware, but now also conversant and opinionated
Community service and giving back builds your power skills and diversity and inclusion leadership skills

BIO:

Steven Pae is a technology executive with deep industry experience in financial services, digital banking and fintech. Steven has senior global positions in both Technology, Digital Product Development and Operations with business, financial and management responsibilities across multiple product lines including digital banking, lending, leasing, equities, foreign exchange, and derivatives.

Recently Steven was Senior Vice President for Marcus by Goldman Sachs in the Consumer Banking. In this role Steven is responsible for consumer lending technology for Marcus.

Prior, Steven was Senior Vice President and CIO and COO of Business Capital Division for CIT Group responsible for technology and operations for the capital businesses across CIT including Equipment Finance, DirectCapital, Lender Finance, and Commercial Services. In addition, Steven was responsible for digital strategy for the commercial businesses in Technology and Operations.

Prior to joining CIT, Steven was Executive Directory and Global Head of Product Development for Electronic Trading at Morgan Stanley. Earlier, Steven was Managing Director and Global Head of Electronic Trading at Bank of America. Prior, Steven was Vice President and Head of Trading Technology at Goldman Sachs.

Steven is an Adjunct Professor at New York University and a National Board Member of Ascend, the largest non-profit Pan-Asian Professional Network.

Steven received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and a Master of Business Administration in Finance from New York University Stern Business School.

Leigh M. Stevens, MBA
Senior Program Manager
Prime 8 Consulting

Mindfulness as Catalyst for Innovation

What is the connection between mindfulness and innovation? How can practicing mindfulness strengthen your capacity as a leader and spark innovation? As a leader if you’re looking to help shift people’s mindset and challenge repetitive mental models either within yourself and/or within your team, view this presentation to learn more. Leigh will share research and the science behind the impact of mindfulness and the interconnectedness with innovation. Included in the presentation is instruction in some techniques that can be incorporated into a daily routine which can shift the trajectory of what happens next!

Take-aways:

Scientific research to share with your team  
Live instruction on mindfulness techniques
Mindfulness practices you can apply at work and at home

BIO:

Leigh’s sense of adventure and 25-year career in technology and consulting led her to drive significant change programs against the backdrop of major organizational transformation – digital and cultural – with geographically dispersed teams, across all organizational levels. Highlights of her career so far include the 8 years she worked for Microsoft, across the globe, and serving on the PMI Global Executive Council.

Leigh went on to explore mindfulness and meditation and became a certified Meditation Teacher through davidji’s 500-hour Masters of Wisdom & Meditation training. Being more present, calm, with an increased level of consciousness and energy to serve others, lead from a place of gratitude and make better choices are some of the many gifts she’s received from a consistent meditation practice.

Working as a consultant since 2019, she continues to thrive in sharing her business expertise combined with her passion for mindfulness and meditation

Xavier Joly
Global Head of Human Resources
Bayer Crop Science

The Moment of Truth: Using Authentic Leadership to Make a Difference

As a leader in a VUCA world, one needs to be aware of their own emotions and the emotions of others in order to make a difference in their team and organization. This requires an Authentic Leadership Mindset, where the leader shows self-awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses, has a sense of purpose, and the ability to truly be themselves in a professional environment. One impactful tool to bring out this vulnerability is Grateful Leadership, where the leader applies the power of acknowledgment to build trust and accountability in their team.

Key Takeaways:

How to be yourself in a professional environment
How to engage itself in a grateful leadership journey
How to leverage and flip the VUCA environment

BIO:

Xavier Joly is the Head of Human Resources for Vegetable Seeds and Environmental Science, based in St. Louis, Missouri. Xavier joined Bayer in May 2014 as Global HR Business Partner for Environmental Science – Emerging Countries, later becoming Global HR Business Partner for Environmental Science. In between his roles with Environmental Science, he was the Global HR Business Partner for Bayer Radiology. Xavier started his professional career in the automotive industry within the Volvo Group, initially in the Supply Chain function before moving into Human Resources. He took on some challenging and exciting assignments in different countries such as Sweden, Belgium, USA, France and Germany where he has developed critical core competencies and strong expertise in human resources, change management, talent management and leadership development. Xavier enjoys spending time with his wife Sarah and his 2 boys, Luther and Adam. The whole family loves traveling and experiencing new cultures and is thrilled to be back in the USA. It will be their 5th experience of living abroad after Gothenburg, Sweden; Brussels, Belgium; Hagerstown, MD, USA; and Berlin, Germany.

Stacey Johnson
Head of Leadership & Culture Academy
Kraft Heinz

Unifying Leadership Expectations and Organizational Culture.

Join us on this inspiring journey, as Stacey Johnson, Head of Kraft Heinz’s Leadership & Culture Academy, details the path to redefining and launching the new Kraft Heinz Leadership Principles. In addition, you’ll hear how the leadership principles are guiding the Company’s strategic learning & development agenda. During this session, Stacey will share reflections on this success story in the making, specifically touching on:

Co-creating leadership principles by involving stakeholders and culture carriers
Leveraging leadership principles to create and design learning programs for impact
Launching and embedding the new principles throughout the organization during a period of business transformation and disruption

BIO:

Stacey is an experienced team leader and L&D professional who is focused on developing inspiring, inclusive & innovative leaders. In her current role as the Head of Leadership & Culture Academy at Kraft Heinz, Stacey is obsessed with equipping leaders and managers with the skills, knowledge and resources needed to develop others, create inclusive environments, and engage employees. Stacey and her team are responsible for the global development of leadership programs, including Manager Excellence, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging as well as the Kraft Heinz Culture Curriculum. Prior to joining Kraft Heinz in 2016, Stacey spent a decade at Teach For America, the national non-profit dedicated to mobilizing as many of our nation’s most promising leaders to grow the movement for educational equity.

Dr. Jill M. Siler
Superintendent & Author of Thrive Through The Five
Gunter ISD

Thrive Through the Five: Leading through Challenging Times

Mark Anthony famously said, “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Well, I absolutely love what I do as a school leader – and I have never worked harder! The truth is there is a small percentage of our work (and life) that is really hard, and this has become even more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This session will dig into some internal strategies to help us be our best, as well as some external strategies to help us lead in the best way during difficult seasons. From personal stories of trial and triumph, to lessons learned in leading through challenging seasons like financial crisis and the global pandemic, I will share “5 Tips to Thrive” in every season of life. We owe it to ourselves and everyone around us to not just survive challenging times, but to truly thrive!

Each of the “5 Tips to Thrive” will be framed in stories around school leadership but will also have strong connections to other industries. I will also share a little bit about my first crisis as a first-time superintendent as we were on the brink of bankruptcy (ended up losing 20% of our staff) – and how I led through that using these concepts.

BIO:

Dr. Jill Siler has been serving as the Superintendent of Gunter ISD, a growing school district an hour north of Dallas, since 2012. Jill grew up in Rochester & Buffalo, NY and completed her undergraduate work at the University of Pittsburgh where she was a collegiate swimmer. She moved to Austin in 1996 and began serving as a high school World Geography teacher and swim coach at John B. Connally High School in Pflugerville ISD. Jill earned her Master’s from Texas State University and began her administrative career in Marble Falls ISD where she served as the Assistant Principal for Instruction. In 2004, Jill went to Lake Travis ISD where she served as a campus and district leader for 8 years. During that time, she completed her doctorate at the University of Texas.

In her first months as a superintendent, Jill faced financial crisis along with many other challenges that leadership brings. In 2015, her school board was named a TASA Honor Board as one of the top 5 school boards in the state and one of her campuses was named a 2017 National Blue-Ribbon School. Jill is the Chair of the Future-Ready Superintendent Leadership Network (FRSLN) Design Team through the Texas Association of school Administrators (TASA) where innovative leaders from across the state gather to learn, share and grow together.

Jill has a passion for helping others reach their goals and is the leader of TASA’s Aspiring Superintendent Academy, and a frequent speaker at Texas’ First-Time Superintendent Academy as well as other leadership and education conferences. Her writing can be found on her website, jillmsiler.com where the initial blog inspiring her book, Thrive Through the Five was featured in the November 2019 edition of AASA School Administrator, the national school leadership organization’s publication.

Omar L. Harris
Founder & Managing Partner
Intent Consulting

The End of the Boss – 7 Rules of the Modern Leader

A boss is not necessarily a leader. A boss can be someone who has authority but still lacks influence. A boss can self-centred, directive, defensive, and more. Leaders, on the other hand, inspire others, encourage their team, are vulnerable, and take responsibility. In this talk, Omar outlines the case to move away from ego-driven behaviors and toward humility driven servant leadership characteristics.

Participants will learn the following:

Why the Boss archetype is leading to a global employee engagement crisis
Why influence is far more powerful than authority in getting things done
How building trust enhances influence
What servant leaders accomplish

BIO:

Omar L. Harris (Charlotte, NC, born in Pittsburgh, PA) is a Business and Servant Leadership Thought-Leader, Award-Winning Bestselling Author of 4 books (including The Servant Leader’s Manifesto, 2020 and Leader Board: The DNA of High Performance Teams), Intent Consulting Founder, and Former GM (GSK and Allergan). With 20+ years of global pharmaceutical executive experience building teams, Omar’s worked on four continents (U.S., Middle East, Asia and Latin America) for Pfizer, Merck, Schering Plough and more. As a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach, Motivational Speaker and Entrepreneur, Harris is passionate about leading teams, high-performance coaching and inspiring future leaders of today and tomorrow to adopt the servant leader mindset and stop toxic leadership behaviors. Harris is also the Co-Author of “From Authors to Entrepreneurs F.A.T.E.: The Personal Side of Indie Publishing” (2015) and Author of “One Blood” fiction book (2011, pen name, Qwantu Amaru). His work has been featured on the Love Ideas Summit, Black News Channel, Thrive Global, CEO World Magazine, South Charlotte Weekly, Fast Leader Show Podcast, Young Upstarts, The Rebel Road Podcast, Human Capital Innovations (HCI) Podcast, VoiceAmerica: Finding Your Frequency and more. As fun facts, Omar speaks 5 languages, plays 7 instruments, and started his first company at the age of 7.

Toby Newman
The Neverending Learner

Deciphering a Learning Mindset: How It Supports an Innovative Company

Having a learning mindset in today’s environment is essential. With technology growing at an exponential rate, it is harder than ever for companies and individuals within companies to keep ahead of the curve (the fight to keep your skills, and hence your products up-to-date and relevant). This idea is very prevalent in certain communities such as technical ones, and not much so in leadership communities but it is the leaders that set the tone for the company. In this talk, Toby Newman will explore how leaders can drive success and innovation through a learning mindset.

To have a true learning mindset, you have the responsibility to share back your new insights within an organization. This is where good leaders become great ones. This is where innovation really gets going. As leaders you have an extra responsibility as you set the tone and environment for this sharing to happen.

We will talk about the importance of these practices:

- Educate on the importance of keeping ahead of the curve for individuals – provide research (World Economic Forum) on changes of skills.
- Encourage the benefits of self-awareness and roll out practices to do it.
- Demonstrate that learning is a priority by putting learning at the top of agendas (take the first 5 mins to share learning)
- Emphasize the practice of skills and a psychologically safe environment to do it in.

BIO:

Toby Newman has been working in the Learning and Development industry for almost 20 years and is passionate about improving the learning experience for all of us. He works for and with companies to provide guidance and support to implement a learning mindset which is the foundation of a great learning experience. Toby has had the honour to guest on a number of podcasts to talk about many topics around L&D and he is currently writing a collaborative book on the importance of the learning experience. Toby is also proud to have been asked to give a TEDx Talk.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement	1 year	Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category .
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
PHPSESSID	session	This cookie is native to PHP applications. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows are closed.
uncode_privacy[consent_types]	1 year	This cookie is set by Uncode WordPress theme and is used to manage privacy settings on the website.
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Cookie	Duration	Description
ss	session	This cookie is set by the provider Eventbrite. This cookie is used for the functionality of website chat-box function.
TawkConnectionTime	session	Tawk.to, a live chat functionality, sets this cookie. For improved service, this cookie helps remember users so that previous chats can be linked together.

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	2 years	The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors.
_ga_1G48TWVF45	2 years	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics.
_gcl_au	3 months	Provided by Google Tag Manager to experiment advertisement efficiency of websites using their services.
CONSENT	2 years	YouTube sets this cookie via embedded youtube-videos and registers anonymous statistical data.
vuid	2 years	Vimeo installs this cookie to collect tracking information by setting a unique ID to embed videos to the website.

Cookie	Duration	Description
test_cookie	15 minutes	The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	5 months 27 days	A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface.
YSC	session	YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages.
yt-remote-connected-devices	never	YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video.
yt-remote-device-id	never	YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video.
yt.innertube::nextId	never	This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen.
yt.innertube::requests	never	This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen.

Cookie	Duration	Description
JOTFORM_SESSION	1 month	No description available.
pum_alm_first_activity	1 day	No description available.
pum_alm_last_activity	1 day	No description available.
theme	1 month	No description available.
userReferer	1 month	No description available.

LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION 2022 Online Conference

GET READY.

Join us in March for our 4th Annual Leadership and Innovation Online Conference.

EVENT SCHEDULE

MEET THE SPEAKERSMore to be announced!

MEET THE SPEAKERS

More to be announced!

Joe Hart

Unleashing Creativity: Organizational Purpose, Engagement and Diversity

Katrina Pugh

Smarter Innovation: Six Disciplines for Getting to Market Faster Together

Hassan Osman

Hybrid Work Management: A four-part framework for building and leading a hybrid team in the new workplace

Louria Lindauer

Be a Better Inclusive Leader

Tendayi Viki

Leading Innovation

Madelyn Blair, PhD

Resilience is a Decision — Are Companies Ready?

Barry Moline

How a Culture of Teamwork Creates Engagement, Happiness, and High Performance

Jana Eggers

The Most Critical Ingredient to Successful AI Use: Your Organization

Bob Safian

Lessons of Rapid Response – Succeeding in the Age of Covid

Tom Brazil

Dynamic Innovation Portfolio Management

Andrew Lee

The Secret to Developing Leaders

Craig Sampson

Designing Experiences: We Are All innovators

Matt Anderson, PMP, PMI-ACP, ICP-APO

Building an Agile Organization – Agile Executive Leadership

2 FREE ON-DEMAND COURSES

2 FREE ON-DEMAND COURSES

Jeff Nielsen

Title and Instructor to Be Announced

WHY ATTEND

Expert Insights

Convenience and Flexibility

Networking Opportunities

Less Stress, Same Benefits

2021 SPONSORS

2021 SPONSORS

Courses

Courses

Online Conferences

Online Conferences

Client Solutions

Client Solutions

Resources

Resources

Who We Are

Who We Are

LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION 2022
Online Conference

MEET THE SPEAKERS
More to be announced!

Joe Hart 

Louria Lindauer 