KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Future-of-work strategist, keynote speaker and author
Fee information first. Availability is normally checked once there is a concrete intention to proceed.
WHY HEATHER
Heather McGowan gives leadership audiences a clear way to connect technological change with the everyday experience of work. Drawing on design, education and her work on adaptation, she examines how people develop the curiosity, confidence and relationships needed to keep learning. Her visual frameworks and research-led storytelling make a broad future-of-work debate concrete: what should leaders stop controlling, what should teams learn, and where does human judgement matter most? For organisations introducing AI or reshaping management, her perspective provides a useful starting point for discussing capability, purpose and trust together. The emphasis is on creating conditions in which people can contribute as work changes.
KEYNOTE TOPICS
When familiar answers become easier to generate, recognising the right problem becomes a more important human contribution. McGowan explores how curiosity, collaboration and the ability to connect ideas can help teams move beyond habitual responses. This topic gives innovation and leadership audiences a basis for discussing the questions they ask, the assumptions they carry and the conditions that let people investigate possibilities before committing to a solution.
AI changes the tasks people perform and the choices they need to make about their own contribution. McGowan examines human agency, learning and the relationship between technological capability and the ways work is organised. For organisations introducing AI, this topic helps frame a conversation about which capabilities to develop, where judgement remains necessary and how leaders can involve people in the transition so that adoption has a clear human purpose.
Trust shapes whether people share information, challenge assumptions and collaborate when the outcome is uncertain. McGowan connects leadership behaviour with the sense of connection and belonging that supports learning across a team. This topic is relevant to culture change and management events, where the useful question is how leaders create an environment in which people can ask for help, contribute different perspectives and take responsibility for progress together.
Experience remains valuable, but it cannot supply every answer when the context changes. McGowan examines curiosity, learning and unlearning as leadership practices, including the need to acknowledge what a team does not yet know. For senior leaders and managers, the topic opens a practical discussion about modelling inquiry, giving people room to develop and sustaining direction while assumptions are tested and the organisation adapts to new demands.
Heather McGowan is a future-of-work strategist, keynote speaker and author who examines how technological change alters the relationship between learning, leadership and human capability. Her work centres on adaptability, curiosity and empathy: the capacities people need when established answers become less reliable and the demands of a role continue to evolve. She approaches these questions through design, education and organisational change, bringing the experience of developing both products and learning environments to her analysis of work.
McGowan began her career in industrial design. She holds a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MBA focused on entrepreneurship from Babson College. At Philadelphia University, now part of Thomas Jefferson University, she helped develop the Design, Engineering and Commerce curriculum and its supporting strategy and advisory network. That interdisciplinary programme connected different fields around real problems, giving her practical experience of designing learning beyond traditional subject boundaries. This background informs her interest in how organisations build the ability to adapt.
With Chris Shipley, she co-authored The Adaptation Advantage, published in 2020, and The Empathy Advantage, published in 2023. The first examines the move towards continuous learning as careers, skills and work change. The second considers how leaders can support an empowered workforce through uncertainty, connecting performance with the quality of people's experience at work. Her earlier book, Disrupt Together, co-authored with Stephen Spinelli, explores interdisciplinary teams and innovation. Across these books, learning and collaboration are recurring foundations of organisational capability.
Her current speaking programme addresses problem finding, purpose, trust, leadership through uncertainty and the relationship between AI and human agency. She uses data, stories and visual frameworks to connect developments in technology with questions about identity, motivation and contribution. The resulting perspective is relevant when a leadership team needs to explain why work is changing and examine how its own behaviours shape the response. AI adoption, in this account, raises questions about how people learn and make decisions alongside questions about tools.
For an event on management and organisational change, McGowan brings particular relevance to the human side of implementation. Her work offers a basis for discussing what managers need to enable: experimentation, meaningful collaboration and the development of capabilities that cannot be reduced to an existing job description. It suits leadership and people audiences seeking a shared language for the future of work and a considered discussion of the conditions that help people navigate it.
ON STAGE
The Augmented Era
Curiosity and organisational capacity
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