Give your teams the edge they need in 2027. Kick-off events offer leaders and organizations a rare opportunity to unite their people around a common purpose and equip them with the tools to achieve it.
As AI and rapid change reshape how we work and sell, the real advantage lies in what people bring to the table: the confidence to adapt, the ability to build trust, and the drive to deliver under pressure.
Our 2027 kick-off speakers help strengthen those qualities. From headliners that set the tone for the year ahead to experts in mindset, high performance, teamwork, sales, resilience, and motivation, each brings insight and inspiration your people can put to work right away.
Whether you’re rallying a sales force, hosting a conference, or bringing together an entire organization, these are the voices to start your year with purpose and momentum. Contact us today to book your 2027 kick-off event in January.
Set the Tone
Open your kick-off with a headliner who commands the room. These marquee names bring the energy, credibility, and big-picture perspective to rally your team and set the tone for the year ahead.
Colonel Jeremy Hansen
Achieving Your Moonshot: Turning Audacious Dreams into Action
Colonel Jeremy Hansen‘s journey to the far side of the Moon on the historic Artemis II mission didn’t happen by accident.
Drawing on stunning imagery and behind-the-scenes stories, he reveals the planning, training, and daily action that made it possible, and offers a practical framework to help your teams define their own moonshot, navigate the unknown, and turn bold goals into results.
Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser
The Champion’s Edge: Leading Through Adversity
Four-time Olympic gold medalist, emergency physician, and former NHL executive Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser brings a rare, high-stakes perspective on leading through change.
Drawing on the leadership principles that drove her success at the highest levels of sport, medicine, and business, she shows teams how to make adaptability their competitive advantage, stay focused under pressure, and build a winning culture in any conditions.
Shawn Kanungo
Friction by Design: Building Trust in the Age of AI
Globally recognized innovation strategist Shawn Kanungo brings a bold, optimistic, and often provocative vision for leading in the age of AI.
As everything becomes faster and more automated, he reveals why the real competitive advantage lies in knowing where to slow down, using intentional friction to build trust, deepen customer relationships, and create experiences technology alone can’t replicate.
Shift the Mindset
Real change starts from the inside out. These speakers help teams adapt their mindsets to a fast-changing world, building the confidence, curiosity, and agility to thrive when the ground keeps shifting.
Jay Kiew
Change Fluency: Leveraging the Language of Change to Drive Growth
Thriving through disruption isn’t about managing change, says innovation strategist Jay Kiew, but becoming fluent in it.
In this experiential keynote, he unpacks Change Fluency™, a leading change navigation playbook, revealing the four Change Mindsets that shape our response to disruption and the three core skills required to build a Change Fluent mindset. The result: teams that can adapt with confidence.
Doug Stephens
How to Win the AI War Without Firing a Shot
AI is no longer a competitive edge — it’s the cost of entry. The businesses that win won’t be the ones with the best models, but the ones most trusted to use them.
Business futurist Doug Stephens challenges leaders to rethink their mindset on competitive advantage in the future of work, revealing why the real advantage is something far deeper and far more human, while outlining concrete steps any company can take to seize it.
Jeremiah Brown
All In: The Mindset That Turns Relentless Disruption into Your Greatest Advantage
Jeremiah Brown went from complete beginner to Olympic medalist in just four years, a feat many said was impossible.
Sharing the mindset of grit and grace that got him there, he shows teams what’s possible when people stop waiting for perfect conditions, accept that change needs to happen, and start moving as one, and how to embrace disruption instead of being overwhelmed by it.
Raise the Bar
Good teams hit their targets. Great teams keep raising them. These speakers help people level up their game, building the confidence, motivation, and drive to perform at their best all year.
Juan Bendaña
Make Confidence Your Competitive Advantage: High-Performance Mindset for Next Level Growth
Trusted by brands like Disney, American Express, and Zillow, Juan Bendaña delivers an energizing keynote that shows audiences why confidence is the edge that turns ambition into results.
Backed by his proven framework, he helps leaders adapt boldly to change, identify barriers, and set clear goals to move through them. Teams walk away ready to raise the bar, take aligned action, and achieve more than they thought possible.
Jennifer Barroll
The Motivation Equation: The Human Path to High-Performance
Even in an AI world, high-performing teams are built by leaders who create clarity, communicate with intention, and cultivate environments where people feel trusted, supported, and inspired.
In this powerful and practical keynote, Jennifer Barroll reveals the core motivators that drive performance and demonstrates how strengths-based leadership and values-focused cultures create the foundation for excellence.
Jessica Campbell
Pressure is a Privilege: The Mindset and Communication of High-Performing Teams
As the first woman to serve as a full-time assistant coach in the NHL, Jessica Campbell knows what it takes to perform when stakes are high.
The highest-performing teams don’t eliminate pressure. They prepare for it. Campbell shows leaders how to communicate with clarity, regulate emotion, and create confidence under pressure, transforming it from something to survive into an advantage.
Build the Team
Strong teams are the engine behind every great year. These speakers help leaders create cultures of trust, ownership, and connection, so people pull together, rise through challenges, and win as one.
Ron Tite
The Culture Connection: Connecting People, Purpose, and Performance
The biggest barrier to growth in any organization? Getting everyone on the same page.
Entrepreneur and bestselling author Ron Tite reveals how to build stronger teams where alignment is felt, not forced, by helping every person understand why their contribution matters and how their role connects to a shared purpose. His roadmap turns employee commitment into exceptional customer experiences and sustainable growth, because when employees thrive, the business thrives.
Rola Dagher
Empowering Leadership at Every Level: Creating Cultures of Ownership
Strong teams grow in environments where everyone has the opportunity to rise to their potential.
Drawing on decades as a tech leader, including as president of Cisco Canada, Rola Dagher shows audiences how to cultivate cultures of ownership, initiative, and continuous learning to unlock innovation at every level. Teams learn to listen to understand, make the most of each other’s strengths, and build the psychological safety that empowers everyone to take risks and lead.
Yvonne Camus
Accelerate Through the Wreckage: How Elite Teams Thrive in Chaos and Uncertainty
In this electrifying keynote, high-performance expert Yvonne Camus takes you inside the mindset and habits of teams who not only survive turbulence — they accelerate through it.
As the only woman on Team Canada’s all-rookie squad at what was then considered the world’s toughest endurance race, she reveals how elite teams keep momentum alive, build resilience together, and turn pressure into performance.
Land the Deal
Strong sales numbers begin with strong connection. These speakers help sales teams build trust, sharpen their influence, and create customer relationships that turn conversations into commitments and prospects into loyal clients.
Yan Markson
The Power of Perception: Influence and Persuasion
Influence, persuasion, and effective communication can be a sales team’s most powerful tools.
In this dynamic keynote, Yan Markson blends live mentalism with strategic communication to illustrate the psychology behind how people make decisions. He shows audiences how to overcome the cognitive biases that dilute their message and frame it to increase perceived value, build trust, and find the “magic sparks” that win customers over.
Riaz Meghji
Human Connection: Your Competitive Advantage in Customer Care
Great products help launch companies. Great customer care sustains them. Human connection expert Riaz Meghji shows teams how to turn every customer interaction into an opportunity for connection, building lasting loyalty.
Audiences will learn to listen without distraction and lead with assertive empathy to out-care the competition and keep customers coming back.
Mark Bowden
Sell with Trust and Credibility
The most effective salespeople never appear to make any effort at all to win you over. They are natural, likable, clear, and consultative, asking intelligent questions to offer solutions that feel right.
Body language expert Mark Bowden shows sales teams how to use nonverbal techniques that add impact and presence. They learn to build lasting relationships, win and hold trust, gain credibility, and become trusted advisors to their clients.
Protect the Energy
Energy is your team’s most valuable resource. These speakers give teams the tools to manage stress, build resilience, and protect it all year long.
Dr. Susan Biali
Stress Resilience for High Performers
Stress can be toxic, but it’s also a powerful source of change, innovation, and achievement. Drawing on cutting-edge science and her own experience with burnout, award-winning physician Dr. Susan Biali shows teams how to build stress resilience and use it as a performance enhancer.
Audiences will learn how to recalibrate the nervous system for deep recovery and build simple habits that strengthen focus and sustain high performance.
Anthony McLean
Fire Up Your Mental Health!
Put the pep back in your team’s step! In this high-energy keynote, “master storyteller” Anthony McLean brings humour, insight, and practical tools to help audiences recharge, refocus, and find more joy at work and at home.
Attendees will discover healthy strategies to manage stress, boost resilience, and build a mental health routine that keeps them energized and focused.
Jessica Janzen
The Blueprint for Resiliency: How Joy Fuels Resiliency for Forward Momentum
The secret to thriving in the year ahead isn’t predicting what’s next. It’s preparing for whatever comes your way.
Through her Blueprint for Resiliency, Jessica Janzen shows audiences how to unlock more joy and energy by shifting from a problem mindset to a possibility mindset and building healthy habits that fuel forward momentum.
Fuel the Fire
Great stories have the power to move people. From the Olympics to outer space, these speakers share journeys that ignite ambition and leave teams ready and motivated to keep pushing forward.
Colonel Chris Hadfield
Preparing for the Future: Making it Happen
Colonel Chris Hadfield has made a career of turning dreams into reality, from combat fighter pilot to commander of the International Space Station.
A five-time bestselling author and powerful storyteller, he shares how to build a long-term vision, overcome setbacks, stay focused and optimistic, and choose the habits that make your desired future happen. Audiences leave with practical strategies and fresh motivation to pursue what matters most to them.
Tessa Virtue
Elite Performance: Unlocking Potential and Sustaining Excellence
The most decorated female figure skater in Olympic history, Tessa Virtue has flourished under the spotlight on the world’s toughest rinks and in the most complex boardrooms.
She draws on her athletic career, background in positive psychology, and role as a Deloitte executive advisor to show audiences how to unlock and sustain high performance, revealing how purpose, collaboration, and resilience help leaders and teams push past their limits and achieve the extraordinary.
Dan Riskin
The Science of Personal and Organizational Transformation
Now that AI has transformed our tools, how can we seize this moment? Biologist and TV host Dan Riskin draws on spectacular examples from evolution and robotics to reveal three science-backed strategies for transformation, showing how clarity of purpose unlocks the growth we’ve always wanted.
Known for building custom presentations, Dan helps individuals see curiosity in a new light, pursue their interests with more vigour, and tap into a deeper sense of inspiration.
January will be here before you know it. Contact us today to book your kick-off speaker and give your teams the edge they need to start the year strong.
