Shortlisted for the Speakers' Awards 2025

Thrilled to share that I’ve been shortlisted for Best Thought Leadership Speaker at the 2025 Speaker Awards! I’m also incredibly honoured to be a finalist for the Booker’s Choice Award — a special shoutout to the friend (you know who you are!) who encouraged me to apply.

Over the past two years, I’ve spoken to organisations across industries about one urgent yet simple idea: We need to rethink leadership for a disconnected world. The answer? Build cohesion — and deliver that message in a smart, funny, and unforgettable way. Thank you to everyone who has given me a platform with their people and the leaders who’ve opened their doors (and minds) to fresh thinking.

When I started writing GLUE: Transforming Leadership in a Hybrid World, organisations were fraying. Teams were drifting. Leaders were reaching for connection in a landscape that had changed almost overnight. The rules of engagement had shifted, but leadership hadn’t caught up. So, I wrote. And rewrote. And listened. The book became my way of thinking out loud: What if cohesion was the missing ingredient in modern leadership? What if others’ research, studies, and groundbreaking work on social capital weren’t outdated, but more urgent than ever?

My conclusion was that organisations don’t just need alignment or better communications. They need genuine human connections across time zones, technologies, and generations. The key to that is a different kind of leadership for the way we now work and live.

Writing the book was just the beginning. Speaking about it — taking those ideas off the page and into rooms full of people — was a different gig altogether.

I’ve had to learn how to turn insight into impact. How to make audiences feel the tension between connection and disconnection. How to use humour, story, silence, and the occasional uncomfortable truth to help leaders see their roles in a new light. Above all, I had to earn the right to be heard. On that, I am on a steep learning curve to market and present my credentials to potential bookers - not just as somebody with something interesting to say, but someone who has something cogent and useful for them to act upon.

In 2024 and early 2025, I delivered over a dozen keynotes in several countries — and I’d love to do even more. This recognition will help open more doors, spark more conversations, and continue the work of reimagining leadership in a hybrid world. That’s why I’m genuinely honoured to be shortlisted for these awards.