Susan David

David's signature keynote, drawn from her #1 WSJ bestseller and 12-million-view TED Talk, presents emotional agility as the defining skill of effective leadership in uncertain times. She challenges the pervasive myth that high performance requires suppressing difficult emotions or projecting relentless positivity — and replaces it with a science-grounded framework for showing up to hard feelings with curiosity rather than judgment, stepping out of the mental loops that derail decision-making, and moving forward in ways that are aligned with values rather than driven by avoidance. One of the most frequently cited keynotes by attendees as genuinely life-changing.

Expanding on her viral TED Talk, David makes the case that psychological rigidity — the insistence on happiness, the silencing of doubt, the performance of certainty — is not a leadership strength but a liability. Organizations that suppress emotional honesty pay for it in disengagement, poor decision quality, and cultures where people cannot speak the truths that matter. This keynote gives leaders a framework for building environments where emotional courage is normalized: where people can be honest about difficulty, disagree constructively, and remain anchored to purpose when conditions are hardest. Particularly powerful as an opening or closing keynote at leadership summits and culture transformation events.

David has spent more than two decades advising senior leaders through mergers, acquisitions, leadership transitions, and culture overhauls at institutions including EY, the World Economic Forum, JP Morgan Chase, and the United Nations. In this keynote, she applies the science of emotional agility directly to the organizational challenges that most frequently derail transformation: the emotional resistance of middle management, the culture of fake positivity that prevents honest feedback, and the leadership behaviors that inadvertently shut down the psychological safety required for real change. A practical, research-grounded session for organizations navigating meaningful transitions.

Employee wellbeing has become one of the most discussed topics in organizational life — and one of the most superficially addressed. David draws on her research and her co-founding of the Institute of Coaching to distinguish between wellbeing as a wellness program and wellbeing as a structural feature of how organizations are led. She presents the psychological conditions — emotional safety, values alignment, autonomy, and authentic connection — that actually predict sustainable high performance, and gives leaders a diagnostic and action framework for assessing and strengthening them. An evidence-rich session for CHROs, culture leaders, and senior teams building people strategies that go beyond perks.