Herminia Ibarra Keynote Speaker

Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour, London Business School
Author, award-winning book ‘Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader’ (2015)
Recipient of Thinkers 50 Leadership Award & listed in Apolitica's top 100 ‘Most Influential People in Gender Policy’

Herminia Ibarra's Biography

Herminia Ibarra is the Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, an award-winning author and renowned expert and speaker on leadership and organizational transformation.

Herminia authored ‘Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader’ (2015), which has received widespread critical praise and received the 2016 Axiom Business Book Silver Award in ‘Leadership’. She also wrote ‘Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career’ (2004).

She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network, the London Business School Governing Body and the Harvard Business School Visiting Committee, where she served as Chair from 2012-16. She also served on the INSEAD Board of Directors.

Herminia contributes regularly to scholarly journals and media publications and she is a highly sought-after speaker for her insights on leadership. Her work has featured in the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, amongst others. Her article ‘The Leader as Coach’ was awarded the 2019 Warren Bennis Prize for the best leadership article in the Harvard Business Review.

Herminia is a Fellow of the British Academy and served as a Judge on the Financial Times–McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award until 2024: She was named four times by Thinkers 50 as a top thinker on leadership and career management. Apolitica listed her in the top 100 ‘Most Influential People in Gender Policy’ and she was awarded the Academy of Management’s Scholar-Practitioner Award 2018, for her research on management.

She studied an M.A. and Ph.D. at Yale University, where she was a National Science Fellow.

5 Leadership Skills for Corporate Transformation

Today more than ever we need leaders who can help transform our firms – so they become more agile, more innovative, more digitally savvy, and more customer-centric. Herminia Ibarra identifies five leadership skills that are vital for enduring and sustained transformation; cross-cutting, collaborating, coaching, culture-shaping and connecting.

Leading Cultural Change for Digital Transformation

In this keynote, Herminia Ibarra draws on diverse business case studies to show the leadership actions, not just at the top, but throughout the organization, that can make or break the success of our efforts to make our organizations more flexible, nimble, and innovative.

Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader

Leadership expert Herminia Ibarra upends traditional, introspective advice and says act first—in order to change your way of thinking. Whether you are moving into a new role or leading change in your current post, Ibarra shows how you can increase your impact by (1) redefining your job (2) expanding your network and (3) being more playful.

She brings world-class authority on leadership and organisational transformation as the Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, helping executives navigate step-changes in role, identity and impact.
She turns leadership development into actionable practice through her bestselling Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, equipping leaders to learn by doing, build influence and drive change through networks and experience.
She helps organisations unlock better decisions and stronger accountability by showing leaders how to act as coaches, drawing on award-winning work recognised with the Harvard Business Review Warren Bennis Prize.
She brings boardroom credibility and global perspective through roles spanning the World Economic Forum Expert Network and senior governance bodies, giving audiences a strategic lens on what leadership demands now.
She is consistently recognised among the most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50, delivering sharp, research-grounded insights that leaders can apply immediately to accelerate transformation.