Keynotes
&
Masterclasses
From discomfort into motion
Which discomfort needs to be on the table in your room?
That is what I build the keynote or masterclass around. For away-days, conferences, inspiration sessions, strategy processes, transitions and change labs: anywhere a group needs to get moving.
First a conversation, then the keynote
Every keynote or masterclass starts with a conversation. That is where we work out what needs to be on the table in your room, who will be sitting there, and what should be different afterwards.
Challenge me in that conversation!
Ask me uncomfortable, strange, unexpected questions. Look for the surprise.
Four questions I always ask:
What journey are you on?
What are the biggest discomforts along the way?
How do you widen your room for action
when challenges are complex and stubborn?
How do you get overview and insight?
Around your questions and mine I build the keynote or masterclass, with stories from biology and systems thinking that stick.
Keynote
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES · MULTIMEDIA · INTERACTIVE
Three stories, a handful of words and a few travel tips, with images, film and questions to the room.
For plenary moments: the opening or closing of a conference, away-day or programme.
For any audience size.
Requirements: a good room, a large screen, headset, speakers, and for larger audiences a stage.
What the room takes home: a new way of looking at its own organisation, and the appetite to act on it.
Masterclass
HALF A DAY · KEYNOTE PLUS WORK
The keynote as the opening, then to work: formats in which the group puts its own situation on the table, a deeper conversation, and a closing round in which everyone names what will be different tomorrow.
For teams, management teams, boards and programmes
of 8 to 80 people.
Requirements: a good room, a large screen, headset, speakers, for larger groups a stage, and work tables.
What the group takes home: a shared language, a sharper picture of its own discomfort, and a first move.
Repertoire
Every keynote and masterclass is made to measure. Recurring themes I draw on:
Vital systems — what a city or organisation must never lose, and who is responsible for it.
Resilience — anticipate, recover, learn, change: four capacities you need all at once.
Polycrisis — when everything happens at the same time and nothing stands on its own anymore.
Ecologising — the city and the organisation as a living system, seen through the eyes of a biologist.
Systems thinking — seeing the whole before you tinker with the parts.
Innovation — starting anew where the old is stuck.
Attention and the two hemispheres — why we narrow down when things get tense, and how to get the wide view back.
A recent keynote:
Navigating clear-eyed through uncomfortable times
Delivered on 3 September 2026. Three stories from biology (a gopher under the ash of Mount St. Helens, a psychiatrist and his homeostat, a blackbird in winter), six words and five travel tips for anyone steering an organisation through a polycrisis. The whole keynote is online, with the films, the navigation map and the questions.