Egoless Leadership: Building High-Performance Teams on Compassion and Empathy. Strategic, confident, decisive — these are just some of the traits that are associated with great leadership. But compassion, empathy, emotional intelligence, and the ability to lead without ego are just as important for any leader looking to authentically inspire their teams to perform at their highest levels. Egoless leaders put the organization and its people’s needs ahead of your own to create a culture where team members are empowered to contribute to business success.

For Netflix director of consumer insights Nikkia Reveillac’s teams, the key has always been her ability to recruit top talent and cultivate inclusive work environments that motivate her team members to embrace the beauty in their diverse experiences, while also bringing out the best in each person. The first steps, she shares with audiences, is being able to check her ego at the door and instilling a collective spirit of curiosity that brings people together and makes problem-solving possible. In this talk, she speaks passionately about what it really means to be an egoless leader, while highlighting the importance of psychological safety, empathy, and an open-growth mindset when it comes to leading high-performance teams on the pursuit to realizing your organization’s full potential.

Curiosity Creates Change. Throughout her life, Nikkia Reveillac has always found a way. Her undying grit and intentional resolve have spurred her success and led her to places she couldn’t have imagined as a young girl growing up in the Caribbean. How was she able to use her background to view opportunities differently and chart her path to becoming a leader at top brands, such as Netflix and Twitter? Upon graduating from business school with an M.B.A in marketing, Reveillac had very few connections that could help her get a foot in the door at her first corporate job and no exact vision for where exactly she wanted to be. Refusing to give up, she sent out hundreds of cover letters to potential employers — all of which went unanswered … except one. Her grit and resilience had drawn the curiosity of Colgate-Palmolive’s vice president of consumer insights — a response that would spark a lifelong connection between the two and change the trajectory of her career and life.

Drawing from this experience that served as the catalyst for her ascent to becoming a business insights and strategy leader, she reveals the reasons why curiosity is the starting point for building authentically diverse teams that are higher performing and more innovative and creative. In this talk, she outlines four practical steps for raising the bar for curiosity and creating spaces where unlikely perspectives are included, valued, and empowered to help organizations grow. As she shares, diversity wasn’t the basis of her future mentor’s initial interest in her. Moreso, it was a curiosity to learn more about this gritty and determined young professional that led to Reveillac earning her first opportunity at a Fortune 500 company and running with it. The organizations that show this same kind of curiosity and willingness to be inclusive and tap into the neurodiversity that exists within their teams are the ones that will be best positioned to unlock the answers that will help them push past the challenges they’ve been grappling with and find new avenues for business success. 

My Journey: A Story of Moving with Intent and Naïve Optimism. Dating back to her roots as a former professional modern dancer, business insights and strategy leader Nikkia Reveillac has always danced to the beat of her own drum. This mindset of going against the grain mixed with just the right amount of naïve optimism was the difference-maker as she navigated New York City’s unforgiving job market upon graduating college. She felt lost and discouraged as she endured several unsuccessful attempts at finding her dream job, but she refused to give up, and instead, got scrappy. Knowing she needed to be seen in order to be heard, she sent out hundreds of cover letters until her drive and tenacity piqued the curiosity of a woman working at Colgate-Palmolive. And so began Reveillac’s career as a corporate changemaker at top brands include Colgate-Palmolive, Netflix, and Twitter. She has carried this mindset of daring to be different ever since. In this introspective talk, she draws from her own personal journey in the corporate world to provide audience members with actionable steps for seeking out roles that reflect their values and challenging the status quo — even when it’s the difficult choice. Reveillac shares inspiration for how people can thrive and level up in their environments, and demonstrates how they can make an impact in new and unique ways when they go against the grain and align their purpose to their goals. 

Emotional Quotient: The Key Ingredient to High Performing Teams. Nikkia Reveillac has been sought after by top companies for her ability to completely restructure teams, reinvigorate her workforce, and create a culture designed to collaborate, innovate, and disrupt highly competitive markets. She approaches the challenges of leadership with enthusiasm and purpose, and is uniquely adept at elevating her teams above and beyond where she found them in order to take organizations to the next level.

As she shares with audiences, the key ingredient to building high-performing teams is emotional quotient/intelligence — or EQ, as she refers to it. Reveillac explains that leaders with high EQ possess the ability to recognize, understand, and manage the emotions of their teams and combine these emotive insights with rational thought to arrive at decisions that are beneficial to their organizations and people. In this compelling talk, she draws from close to two decades building and nurturing industry-leading teams to demonstrate the importance of leveraging unending empathy for people and their nuanced lived experiences when it comes to bringing out their best and setting your organization up for success. 

How to Navigate Power Dynamics at Work. As Netflix’s director of consumer insights Nikkia Reveillac can attest to, being called “disruptive” at work didn’t always used to be a form of praise. In this powerful talk, she is unafraid of being honest and vulnerable with audiences about one of the most pivotal moments in her career: the first time she cried at work. Reveillac reflects on her experiences navigating her relationship with a superior who led with an iron fist. He had promised the CEO that a new product launch was in the works, but Reveillac’s research team had uncovered insights that suggested it would be wise to take a step back and adapt the strategy. This upset the head of innovation who berated Reveillac behind closed doors, leading to her bursting into tears following the conclusion of the meeting and reaching out to her mentor in the company for advice.

This experience lit a fire under Reveillac, and she shares the lessons she learned from this moment to help others navigate power dynamics at work so that they can have their voice be heard, and make a positive impact. She demonstrates actionable tactics for how anyone can become more confident and skilled at taking part in critical discussions at work or in other areas of life, challenging the status quo when the time calls for it, and embracing the disruptor within.  

Leading Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive Teams. Having lived and led all over the world and being of Caribbean background herself, Nikkia Reveillac offers a truly unique perspective on building diverse, inclusive, and equitable teams. With DEI at the foundation of the high-performing teams she’s led, Reveillac opens audiences’ eyes to the advantages teams have when their leaders and members are conscious of each individual and the experiences that have shaped them, as well as the importance of creating an environment where all members feel empowered to contribute to the success of the team. In this talk, she shares how, although there’s no one right answer and leaders are often winging it too, embracing diverging viewpoints is often the first step in converging teams, while also providing her best insights for looking into the DEI lens when assembling the best talent.  

Why Research Is the Heart and Soul of Innovation. For business leader Nikkia Reveillac, innovation is about introducing new ideas and products that close gaps and solve problems. In setting out to solve problems — whether in processes or with products — she begins by asking her own questions. And as a Caribbean woman whose experiences have taken her all over the world, and who has had to move differently in order to create the opportunities she was after, Reveillac is able to view business challenges in ways her peers may not think to explore. This, she explains, is research — the starting point of innovation, and its most influential phase. In this talk, she outlines tried-and-true and out-of-the-box methods audience members can use to elevate research operations within their organizations to power true innovation. Attendees will come away with a more complete understanding of how to uncover the ways people use their products, what makes their users tick, and how to use these insights to innovate and bring forth change in a way that is welcomed by users.

From Culture Shock to Culture Shift. In 2019, Twitter hired a new VP whose iron first approach had everyone walking on eggshells as culture shift turned into culture shock. Nikkia Reveillac, who headed Twitter’s research department at the time, observed what was happening around her and tried to advocate for those who were being affected. She became the voice for anyone who felt they couldn’t speak out on their own. As a result, she was unceremoniously locked out of her accounts and let go for advocating for herself and her people.

In this talk, Reveillac speaks candidly about this chapter in her career and the impact it had on her as a leader and a person. Her story is a wake-up call to leaders and their teams on the importance of building cultures where performance, communication, and connection are prioritized equally, and where people feel comfortable to speak up without fear of retaliation before things begin to spiral out of control. Reveillac empowers people to find their voice at work, while outlining practical approaches for turning culture around the right way.

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