Margaret Heffernan Keynote Speaker

Margaret Heffernan is a keynote speaker, an entrepreneur, a CEO, and an author.  She was named one of the Internet’s Top 100 by Silicon Alley Reporter in 1999, one of the Top 25 by Streaming Media magazine and one of the Top 100 Media Executives by The Hollywood Reporter. Her “Tear Down the Wall” campaign against AOL won the 2001 Silver SABRE award for public relations.

Margaret is the author of several books including Wilful Blindness, which was a shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Best Business Book award and, in 2014, the Financial Times named it one of its “best business books of the decade.” Her book A Bigger Prize won the Transmission Prize in 2015 for the great communication of important ideas. Beyond Measure : The Big Impact of Small Changes was published in 2015.

Margaret’s TED talks have been seen by over 6 million people. She has been invited to speak at all of the world’s leading financial services businesses, the leading FTSE and S&P corporations as well as the world’s most successful sports teams. She continues to advise private and public businesses, to mentor senior and chief executives and to write for the Financial Times and Huffington Post.

Margaret has been outspoken on the topic of gender equality and the gender pay gap, having confronted her own employers as a Chief Executive who was earning less than her male peers.

Speaking Topics

• Collaboration: A Bigger Prize – Dr Heffernan discusses how organizations have specific routines and cultures that develop and enhance people who can work together effectively for years on end.
• Willful Blindness: How we ignore the obvious at our peril – Discussing the forces at work in corporate cultures that allow willful blindness to flourish and how to maximize it.
• Uncharted: How to think about an unpredictable future – Preparing companies for the age of uncertainty.
• Human Work – Discussing how there are fundamental mindsets and attitudes which will make organizations better able to be creative and responsive as the world changes. This talk derives from all of Dr Heffernan’s major work around collaboration, creativity, curiosity and the need for organizations of all kind to stay connected to the societies they serve.