Sigrid Kaag Keynote Speaker

UN lead negotiator for Gaza and the Middle East Peace Process (2024–2025)
First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of the Netherlands (2022–2024)
Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation (2017–2021)

Sigrid Kaag's Biography

Sigrid Kaag is a globally recognized leader with over 35 years of experience in high-stakes diplomacy, crisis management and international trade and finance.

Most recently, Kaag served as the United Nations’ top negotiator for Gaza and the Middle East Peace Process (2024–2025), leading high-level negotiations with all parties to secure a ceasefire and enable massive humanitarian relief in one of the world’s most intractable crises.

From 2022 to 2024, Ms. Kaag was First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of the Netherlands—the first woman to hold the post. She delivered a historic reduction in national debt while maintaining fiscal discipline, shaped the European Union’s capital markets and financial architecture to drive investment and growth. As Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation (2017–2021), she spearheaded high-level trade missions to key emerging markets alongside leading Dutch and multinational companies. In 2020, she was elected political leader of the Democrats 66 (D66) party, guiding it to victory in the 2021 Dutch general elections.

Earlier, Ms. Kaag held senior United Nations roles in conflict zones, including Under-Secretary-General and Special Coordinator for Lebanon (2015–2017) and Coordinator of the landmark UN–OPCW Joint Mission (2013–2014) that successfully eliminated Syria’s declared chemical weapons programme under active wartime conditions.

Today she advises governments and boards on geopolitical and geo-economic strategy, co-chairs the United Nations Foundation, sits on the European Investment Bank Global Advisory Council, and teaches at Sciences Po Paris. Fluent in six languages including Arabic, she was educated at Oxford (MPhil), Exeter, and the American University in Cairo.

Sigrid Kaag’s keynotes deliver a rare combination of frontline diplomatic experience, strategic insight, and unflinching moral clarity. With warmth, precision, and quiet authority, she helps audiences navigate the intersections of conflict, trade, finance, and governance in an era of polycrisis. Her speeches inspire to turn complexity into opportunity and to rebuild trust and create shared prosperity, even in the most challenging environments.

She helps leaders navigate geopolitical uncertainty, international trade and global economic change, equipping organisations to make better decisions in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.
She translates decades of diplomatic, governmental and financial leadership into practical insights, helping executives and policymakers build resilience, strengthen governance and lead through crisis.
She combines more than 35 years of experience across international diplomacy, finance and conflict resolution, offering a unique perspective shaped by senior leadership in the United Nations and the Dutch Government.
As the Netherlands’ first female Minister of Finance and the United Nations’ senior negotiator for Gaza and the Middle East Peace Process, she has led some of the world’s most complex negotiations while shaping international policy on finance, trade and security.
Her compelling keynotes equip audiences with practical strategies to navigate geopolitical risk, build trust across cultures and lead with confidence, integrity and purpose in an era of global uncertainty.