With more than a decade working at the heart of the technology industry, Dex Hunter-Torricke has managed communications for some of the most-influential and admired Silicon Valley leaders and corporations of our day. In his daily work, Dex plays a critical role in writing the next chapter on science, tech, the economy, and society across the globe, and spearheads efforts to bring the stories of how the world is being moved forward to light. From 2012-2016, he led the executive communications team at Facebook and served as personal speechwriter for Mark Zuckerberg. He then went on to join SpaceX as senior director of communications. He later served as the VP Global Communications & Public Engagement for the Oversight Board for Meta, the independent body that makes decisions on Facebook and Instagram’s most challenging content issues. Dex takes audiences into Facebook’s boardroom, Musk’s open-concept cubicle, the famed Googleplex, and finally to the UN itself to share lessons on what it takes in today’s environment to build highly effective internal teams, how to use storytelling in modern communications, and what to make of the steady transition from local to global that’s unfolded over the past decade.

Lisa Sun, founder and CEO of GRAVITAS, seamlessly blends stories from her data-driven insights from 11 years at McKinsey & Company and from her experience as an entrepreneur launching an innovative retail brand to offer talks that encourage audiences to choose self-confidence, work to harness their “superpower,” and use gravitas to advance personally and professionally. Sun explores why it’s vital to push past your potential, how to transform an idea into a movement, and why you’ve got to bet on yourself every single day. Sun has always had a passion for style, for inclusivity, and for helping people look and feel their best and was named one of Washingtonian Magazine's Best Dressed Women.

Regarded as the “CEO-Maker,” “DEI Professor,” and the “Cubicle to Corner Office Empress,” Dethra Giles is a workplace and career optimizer who advises organizations and individuals on how to chart their unique paths to success. She is a four-time TEDx speaker who has been named a “Top 100 HR Influencer” by Engagedly, and was selected by HR Gazette’s “HRchat” podcast as one of the “Top 22 Most Influential Figures in HR.” With clients including Kaiser Permanente, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), The Army Corp of Engineers, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the Salvation Army, Giles shares a unique blend of advanced education and industry experience that has been described as “university-tested and industry-approved,” and can be implemented by organizations of any size, and across industries.

Nikkia Reveillac is a trailblazing executive insights and innovation leader, business consultant, podcast host, and speaker. She has overcome significant obstacles throughout her career to deliver exceptional results at some of the world’s most influential tech, entertainment, and consumer packaged goods companies. She has drawn upon her creative background as a professional dancer, her unique multicultural perspective as a Caribbean woman, her entrepreneurial instincts, two decades of experience building global industry-leading teams, and her distinctly humane way of framing all manner of questions to bring meaningful transformation everywhere she has been. Reveillac was instrumental in helping Netflix define its first-ever brand promise, created a safer organizational culture at Twitter during the tumultuous pandemic years and 2020 U.S. election cycle, helped develop innovative oral care solutions for consumers in Sub-Saharan Africa at Colgate, grew high-performing and emotionally intelligent teams at all of her companies, and was the first to launch an online marketplace for Trinidad Carnival costumes. Today, she advises businesses of all sizes to leverage research, data, and insights for disruptive innovation and brand building, and she mentors junior and senior talent for career growth.

When the world’s top companies want to understand what’s next for their businesses and how they can create the next big breakthrough in their industries, they turn to world-renowned futurist Sheryl Connelly. Connelly is a global trends and consumer expert whose mastery at identifying what’s coming around the corner and the potential influences on customer attitudes and behavioral patterns that directly impact business strategy is unparalleled. From 1996-2023, she was a cornerstone presence on Ford Motor Company’s global trends and futuring team, working her way up the ranks at the automotive juggernaut and becoming the company’s chief futurist. Connelly draws upon her business foresight expertise and experiences at Ford to help organizations in any industry identify and analyze global consumer trends in order to lay the groundwork for long-term, future-focused planning and strategy across the entire company, and anticipate the ever-evolving needs and desires of the people they serve.

Erica Dhawan is the Founder & CEO of Contential and co-author of "Get Big Things Done." She is on a mission to advise organizations and leaders to accelerate the connectedness of your workforce, become masters of connectional intelligence, “spar” in order to reach your goals more quickly, and prepare your global workforce for the future. Through Dhawan's keynote speeches and interactive presentations, she’ll do just that.

Mark Penn’s career spans 40 years in market-research, advertising, public relations, polling, and consulting, and he has advised top world leaders, led companies, and written best-selling books. Currently, Penn is the president and managing partner of The Stagwell Group, a private equity fund that invests in marketing services companies and reinvents the traditional holding company model. Before founding The Stagwell Group, he served in senior executive positions at Microsoft, where as executive vice president and chief strategy officer, he was responsible for working on core strategic issues across the company, blending data-analytics with creativity to help set the company on a new course.

Kim Lear is a writer, researcher, and the founder of Inlay Insights. She is known for skillfully weaving eye-opening statistics, insightful stories, and relevant case studies to make presentations come alive. Before founding Inlay, Kim was the content director at BridgeWorks, a research firm dedicated to generational and millennial trends. Kim’s interest has always been understanding the social trends shaping the future. Her undergrad research was on Baby Boomers redefinition of aging, and her post-grad work was on Millennials and social media trends. Her two most recent studies are focused on the rapidly changing world of work. The Pandemic Time Capsule, a 200-interview project, provides insight into how quarantine, work-from-home, and the “new normal” reshaped the world and our expectations. Why They Leave, a 100-interview series focused on job change trends in the pandemic, attempts to uncover why people left their jobs, where they went, and what, if anything, could have enticed them to stay.

Co-author of the best-selling book When Generations Collide, David Stillman provides a comical and intuitive perspective on recruiting and managing four generations. True to his own Boomer and Xer personalities, Stillman offers strategies for marketing and selling to customers of each generation.

Paul Ryan served ten terms in the U.S. House of Representative and as Speaker of the House from 2015 to 2019. Known for his meteoric rise in politics and often praised for his seriousness and honesty, Ryan is a committed conservative and public servant who has spent his life advocating for real solutions that expand opportunity for Americans. Before serving as Speaker of the House, he was Chair of the House Budget Committee, Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, and a U.S. Vice Presidential candidate. He is exclusively represented by Leading Authorities speakers bureau.

Renowned psychology expert and Stanford University professor Michele Gelfand is one of the leading researchers and writers on culture and the impact of culture on behavior. Gelfand uses field, experimental, computational and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture and its multilevel consequences for human groups. Her work has been cited over 50,000 times and has been featured in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Voice of America, Fox News, NBC News, ABC News, and The Economist, among other outlets. Most recently, she is the author of "Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World."

In a public service career that spans more than three decades and includes service in two presidential administrations, as well as two terms in the United States Senate (R-Ohio, 2011-2023) and six terms in the United States House of Representatives, Rob Portman has been among the most influential presences in American politics and policy. He has held various high-ranking government roles through the course of his career. In addition to the aforementioned roles, Portman was the 14th U.S. Trade Representative (2005-2006), as well as the director of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush. Portman is known for his civility, successful bipartisan policymaking, work ethic, and extensive expertise of a broad range of complex issues. With more than 220 of his bills signed into law by Presidents Biden, Trump, and Obama during his tenure in the Senate, it is impossible to overstate his impact on American politics.