Virtual LeaderCon 2024 - Speakers

Kevin Eikenberry

Chief Potential Officer - The Kevin Eikenberry Group

Host - Virtual LeaderCon

Kevin Eikenberry is a world expert on leadership development and learning. He is the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, & co-founder of The Remote Leadership Institute. He has helped organizations across North America, and leaders from 43 countries on leadership, teamwork, communication and more. 

He has twice been named by Inc.com as one of the top 100 Leadership and Management Experts in the World and been included in other similar lists. He is the author, co-author or a contributing author to nearly 20 books, including best-sellers Remarkable Leadership and From Bud to Boss – Secrets of the Successful Transition to Remarkable Leadership (with Guy Harris), The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership (with Wayne Turmel). In January 2021, The Long-Distance Teammate: Stay Engaged and Connected While Working Anywhere will be released. His blog is ranked among the world’s best, most read and most shared on leadership, has been visited over 4 million times.

Mary Abbajay

Author of Managing Up and President of Careerstone Group, LLC

Mary Abbajay, author of the best-selling, award winning Managing Up: How to Move Up, Win at Work, and Succeed with Any Type of Boss is the president of Careerstone Group, LLC, a full service organizational and leadership development consultancy that delivers leading-edge talent and organizational development solutions to business and government. 

As a sought-after author, speaker, consultant, and trainer, Mary helps clients develop the strategies, skills and sensibilities needed for success in the 21st century. Mary is the co-host of the weekly workplace advice podcast, Cubicle Confidential and is a highly rated LinkedIn Learning instructor. As a frequent expert contributor for television, radio, and print publications Mary provides practical leadership and career guidance. Her work and advice have appeared in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, Money Magazine, Southwest Airlines Magazine, CNN.com, Monster, CNBC, and the BBC.

Yosi Amram

Clinical Psychologist, CEO Leadership Coach, and Award-Winning Author

Yosi Amram, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist, a CEO leadership coach, and an award-winning author. Previously the founder and CEO of two companies that he has led through successful IPOs, Yosi has coached over 100 CEOs many of whom have built companies with thousands of employees and revenues in the billions. 

With engineering degrees from MIT, an MBA from Harvard, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Sofia University, he is a pioneering researcher in the field of spiritual intelligence, whose research has received over 1000 citations.  As the author of the Nautilus Book Award Gold Medal-winning Spiritually Intelligent Leadership: How to Inspire by Being Inspired, Yosi is committed awakening greater spiritual intelligence (SI) in himself and the world. Yosi is also the founder of several non-profits, including trueMASCULINITY.org, Engendering-Love.org, and AwakeningSI.org.

Mark Babbitt

President of WorqIQ

Mark S. Babbitt is President of WorqIQ, a firm that helps organizations understand leadership's impact on culture, the company's collective level of Workplace Intelligence (WQ), and what “good” means to them.

Mark is also CEO and Founder of YouTern, a career-focused community that helps college students, recent graduates, and young professionals find their first or next internship or job within the right culture for them.

In addition to the best-selling Good Comes First, Mark co-authored A World Gone Social. Followers also find Mark's advice in Entrepreneur, Inc., Forbes, and many other publications. An in-demand speaker, Mark was named one of Inc. Magazines' Top 100 Leadership Speakers.

Rich Diviney

Author, Leadership Expert, Retired Navy SEAL Commander

Rich Diviney, a bestselling author, leadership expert, and retired Navy SEAL commander, brings over two decades of exceptional experience to the stage. Over the course of a 20-year career, he completed more than thirteen overseas deployments and served in multiple leadership positions, to include being the officer in charge of an extremely specialized SEAL selection process, curating the most elite performers through a specialized selection process. 

Retiring in 2017, he wrote the book “The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers to Optimal Performance” and pioneered the Attributes Performance Method. This groundbreaking approach to hiring and team building helps companies assess candidates and current teams based on Attributes rather than skills. 

Beyond the corporate sphere, Rich focuses on empowering individual performance and guiding personal development through his book, assessments, and workbooks. Currently crafting his second book, "Masters of Uncertainty," Rich promises invaluable tools and stress management strategies for thriving in an uncertain world. 

David Dye

President of Let's Grow Leaders

David Dye helps human-centered leaders find clarity in uncertainty, drive innovation, and achieve breakthrough results. President of Let’s Grow Leaders, their organization is known for practical tools and leadership development programs that stick. David and his co-author, Karin Hurt, are the award-winning authors of six books including, Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates and Powerful Phrases for Dealing With Workplace Conflict. David Dye is a former executive and elected official. David is committed to their philanthropic initiative, Winning Wells – building clean water wells for the people of Cambodia.

Chris Edmonds

Speaker, Author, Executive Consultant

Chris Edmonds is a speaker, author, executive consultant. He’s the author of two Amazon best sellers: Good Comes First (2021) and The Culture Engine (2014). Chris is a top 30 organizational culture Global Guru, an Inc. Magazine Top Leadership Speaker and a featured presenter at South by Southwest. He’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, SmartBrief, People, CNN, Fox31, NBC, and Fast Company.

Chris’ Culture Leadership Charge and Good Comes First video episodes can be found on YouTube.

Julie Winkle Giulioni

Author and Champion for Workplace Growth & Development

Julie Winkle Giulioni is a champion for workplace growth and development and helps executives and leaders optimize talent and potential within their organizations. One of Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 speakers, she’s the author of Promotions Are So Yesterday: Redefine Career Development. Help Employees Thrive and the co-author of the international bestseller, Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Organizations Need and Employees Still Want, translated into seven languages.

Julie is a regular columnist for Training Industry Magazine and SmartBrief and contributes articles on leadership, career development, and workplace trends to numerous publications including Fast Company and The Economist. You can keep up with Julie through her blog and LinkedIn.

Mark Herschberg

Author and Creator of Brain Bump

Mark is the author of The Career Toolkit, Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You and creator of the Brain Bump app. Educated at MIT, Mark has spent his career launching and fixing new ventures at startups, Fortune 500s, and academia. He’s developed new digital media, online marketplaces, new authentication systems, and tracked criminals and terrorists on the dark web. Mark helped create MIT’s “Career Success Accelerator”, where he’s taught for twenty years.

Jacquie Jordan

Leader, Organizational Development Consultant, and Coach

Jacquie Jordan is a leader, organizational development consultant and coach and the co-author of Becoming a Self-Reliant Leader: How Grit and Disciplined Duty Forge Indomitable Teams, which leverages the experience of wilderness expeditions to bring key learnings back to the office. As an Army logistics officer and through her study at Teachers College, Columbia University, she cultivated her passion for improving work through growing people and building teams.

Jones Loflin

Author and Coach

Jones Loflin has made it his life’s work to deliver powerful ideas and practical solutions to help people make the best choices with their time.

Jones’ innovative solutions attracts the attention of all types of organizations. His client list includes Federal Express, Tractor Supply, and Choice Hotels as well as the United States military and a number of international companies.

Jones is an accomplished author and coach. His books include Always Growing, Juggling Elephants, Getting The Blue Ribbon, and Getting to It.

Jones believes the key to success is being passionate about certain things in life, including family, spiritual beliefs, career and relationships. One of his favorite quotes is by Zig Ziglar: “Go as far as you can see by faith, and when you get there you can see farther.”

Jones lives in North Carolina with his wonderful wife Lisa. They have two perfect daughters and one really cool son-in-law.

Marisa Murray

CEO of Leaderley International

Marisa Murray P. Eng., MBA, PCC is a leadership development expert and the CEO of Leaderley International, an organization dedicated to helping executives become better leaders in today’s rapidly changing, highly complex world.

Marisa leverages her over two decades of executive experience as a former Partner with Accenture and VP at Bell Canada in providing executive coaching, and leadership development services for organizations including Accenture, Molson-Coors and Pratt & Whitney.

She is an author of three Amazon Best Selling leadership development books:

• Work Smart: Your Formula for Unprecedented Professional Success

• Iterate! How Turbulent Times Are Changing Leadership and How to Pivot

• Blind Spots: How Great Leaders Uncover Problems and Unlock Performance

As well as co-author of the USA Today Bestseller: The Younger Self Letters: How Successful Leaders & Entrepreneurs Turned Trials Into Triumph (And How to Use Them to Your Advantage)

Marisa is a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coach Federation (ICF). Her certifications include: Erickson's The Art and Science of Coaching, Marshall Goldsmith's Stakeholder Centered Coaching®, Judith Glaser's Conversational Intelligence®,  HS Emotional Intelligence EQi-2.0, Marisa Peer's Rapid Transformational Therapy, The Neuroscience School for Coaches, WBECS Coach Masters Toolkit and more. She is a Professional Engineer and alumni from the University of Waterloo and holds an MBA from Queen’s University.

When not working, she can be found spending time with her husband and two sons. She loves traveling, skiing and sharing her love of learning as she deepens her expertise as a certified yoga, meditation and wellness practitioner.

Minette Norman

Author, Speaker and Leadership Consultant

Minette Norman is an award-winning author, speaker, and leadership consultant who previously spent decades leading global technical teams in the Silicon Valley software industry. 

Minette knows that when groups embrace diversity in all its forms, breakthroughs emerge, and innovation accelerates. Her most recent position before starting her consultancy was as Vice President of Engineering Practice at Autodesk. Responsible for influencing more than 3,500 engineers around the globe, she focused on state-of-the-art engineering practices while nurturing a collaborative and inclusive culture. 

As the author of The Boldly Inclusive Leader and the co-author of The Psychological Safety Playbook, Minette is committed to helping leaders unleash the full potential of the people in their organizations.

Named in 2017 as one of the “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” by the San Francisco Business Times and as “Business Role Model of the Year” in the 2018 Women in IT/Silicon Valley Awards, Minette is a recognized leader with a unique perspective. 

Minette holds degrees in Drama and French from Tufts University and studied at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.

Dan Rockwell

Author and blogger of Leadership Freak

I'm Dan Rockwell, a leadership enthusiast dedicated to serving others. I’m the co-author of, The Vagrant, The Inner Journey of Leadership. In addition, I’m recognized by Inc Magazine as a Top Fifty Leadership and Management Expert and one of the Top 100 Great Leadership Speakers. The American Management Association recognized me a top 50 leader in business. 

My blog, Leadership Freak, is read in every country in the world. I have an MBA as well as degrees in Theology, Pastoral Ministry, and Construction and Design. I've owned three businesses and served as a Workforce Development Consultant for a Penn State University Special Affiliate. Currently, I coach leaders and write to elevate leadership excellence.

Jan Rutherford

Executive Coach, Keynote Speaker, and Former Green Beret

Jan Rutherford is an executive coach, keynote speaker and a former Green Beret. He is the founder of Self-Reliant Leadership® where he leads Crucible® wilderness expeditions with executives and veterans. He’s the co-host of The Leadership Podcast, has online courses on LinkedIn, Skillsoft, and Udemy, and is the author of “The Littlest Green Beret: On Self-Reliant Leadership.” His next book, “Becoming a Self-Reliant Leader: How Grit and Disciplined Duty Forge Indomitable Teams,” will be out in the Summer of 2024. 

Nada Sanders

Thought Leader and Professor

Nada R. Sanders, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized AI thought leader, expert in forecasting and global supply chain intelligence, and Distinguished Professor at D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University in Boston. Ranked by Stanford as one of the world’s top 2% of scientists, she’s a sought-after speaker and the author of 100-plus top-tier scholarly publications and seven books, including The Humachine: AI, Human Virtues, and the Superintelligent Enterprise (Routledge, Second Edition; March 11, 2024).

Michael Bungay Stanier

Author of The Coaching Habit and More

Michael Bungay Stanier is best known for The Coaching Habit, the best-selling coaching book of the century and recognized as a classic. His most recent book, How to Work with (Almost) Anyone, shows how to build the Best Possible Relationship with the key people at work. Michael was a Rhodes Scholar, and was recently awarded the coaching prize by Thinkers50, “the Oscars of management”. 

Wayne Turmel

Master Trainer, Author, Speaker, & Podcast Host

Wayne Turmel is a co-founder of the Remote Leadership Institute. He has spent the last twenty years or more obsessed by how people communicate at work. His work has helped organizations on four continents develop the communication skills needed to lead people, projects, and teams and to make the adjustment to remote working and virtual teams.

Besides The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership from Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Wayne is the author of nine books, including ASTD’s 10 Steps to Successful Virtual Presentations and Meet Like You Mean It: A Leader’s Guide to Painless and Productive Virtual Meetings. He has also contributed to almost a dozen other books. His groundbreaking podcast, The Cranky Middle Manager Show, was one of the first leadership podcasts to be included in the list of 50 Top Influential HR Blogs by BNET. His clients include the American Red Cross, Schneider Electric, Dell, and several departments of the United States and Canadian governments.

Marshall Goldsmith has called Wayne “one of the truly unique voices in leadership.”

Erin Wade

Bestselling Author, Chef, and Entrepreneur

Erin Wade is a bestselling author, chef, and entrepreneur. Erin opened a wildly popular restaurant, Homeroom, which has been covered everywhere from the Cooking Channel to the Wall Street Journal. She authored the bestselling The Mac & Cheese Cookbook, as well as a viral op-ed in the Washington Post that was named one of the publication’s best of the year. Erin's work on business culture has been covered in Forbes and The New York Times, and she was named one of thirty-five “World-Changing Women” by Conscious Company magazine. Erin has a public policy degree from Princeton and a law degree from UC Berkeley. She lives in the Bay Area with her family and an array of surfboards.