Dr Ellen Joan Ford draws on her research and practical experiences to drive organisational outcomes by enhancing inclusive leadership capabilities and workplace culture. Ellen shares her inspirational experiences as a military veteran, corporate leader, academic, humanitarian and parent, to demonstrate the power of Belonging, Autonomy and Purpose Leadership for creating thriving workplaces.

Ellen is a recipient of the prestigious Sir Peter Blake Leadership Award, is Person of the Year – Manawatu Standard and KiwiBank New Zealander of the Year – Local Hero for her acts of leadership. Ellen is engaging, authentic and enthusiastic.

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In this keynote, Mason Gismondi, Head of Psychosocial Safety at Bupa Asia Pacific, will examine how psychosocial safety can be positioned as a strategic business consideration—beyond compliance or employee wellbeing initiatives. Drawing on enterprise-level examples, Mason will explore how identifying and managing psychosocial risk contributes to financial sustainability, effective change management, and innovation readiness.

The session will cover practical ways senior leaders can integrate psychosocial metrics into governance structures, transformation programs, and broader business planning. It will also highlight how psychologically safe environments support long-term performance, reduce risk exposure, and contribute to more resilient organisational cultures. Suitable for cross-sector C-suite leaders, the session takes a systems-focused approach to psychosocial safety as a core component of sustainable business strategy.

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What would happen if AI Agents completed work from your backlog faster than you could plan the next iteration?  How would your organisation need to adapt if teams of people and agents could deliver an infinite number of features? The pace of AI progress means that these questions are no longer theoretical. We are in the midst of a generational shift where software outputs will cease to be the constraint on value delivery. Instead of chasing outputs, your operating model must relentlessly optimise for outcomes.  In the Age of AI, success requires organizational-level transformation–and that means a new operating model.  

In this presentation, Mik Kersten, Planview CTO and author of Project to Product, will give an overview of his upcoming book, Output to Outcome. You will learn about the seven shifts needed to implement AI native organisational structures and product operating model.  Once coding is no longer the constraint, optimizing your operating model becomes essential to harnessing the 10x productivity gains available for delivering business and customer outcomes in the Age of AI.

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Let’s not sugarcoat it: the world feels like a dystopian Netflix series gone feral. Democracy backsliding. Authoritarian strongmen back on their thrones. Headlines piling up like a slow-motion car crash we can’t look away from. And under it all, that gnawing voice: what’s the point?

But here’s the thing: humans have been here before. Through war, plague, collapse and ruin, we’ve kept showing up. We’ve rebuilt. We’ve found new ways to connect, to lead, to love. We’ve made meaning out of the mess.

In this closing address, Dr. Monty Badami doesn’t promise false hope or easy solutions. Instead, he offers a raw invitation: to hold the chaos without flinching. To create small “bubbles of hope” where we show up with radical consistency, even when we feel lost. To scale deep, not just wide — investing in human connection, in the slow, messy, necessary work of building trust and collective courage.

Because leadership isn’t tested when things are going well. It’s tested now. In the swirl of uncertainty and fear, our humanity is our only real edge.

So yes, the world is on fire. But let’s keep showing up anyway.

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