Sigrid Kaag Keynote Speaker

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.