Keynote SpeakersSusan David, PhD is one of the world’s leading management thinkers, a keynote speaker and an award-winning Harvard Medical School psychologist.
For the past two decades, she has studied how we navigate our emotions shapes everything that matters: our actions, careers, relationships, health, and happiness.
Her #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Emotional Agility – based on the concept that Harvard Business Review heralded as a “Management Idea of the Year” and winner of the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award – describes the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change.
Emotional Agility has been translated into 30 languages. It has won numerous accolades, including Amazon’s Best Books of the Year Award and the Books for a Better Life Psychology Award.
Over 10 million people have viewed
Dr Susan David’s TED Talk on Emotional Agility.
What is Emotional Agility?
Rapid technological change, globalisation, and the COVID-19 pandemic have fundamentally disrupted how we live and work. We increasingly find ourselves caught between organisational demands and environmental realities. Successful organisations require flexibility, teaming, customer-centricity, innovation, and inclusion. Yet, simultaneously, increasing complexity conspires against positive change, leading to rigidity, lower wellbeing, and transactional relationships. The demand for people and organisations to be agile has never been greater.
Dr Susan David developed emotional agility as a practical, science-based psychological framework that helps individuals and organisations thrive. At its core, emotional agility is the capacity to see ourselves and others in a wholehearted, healthy way. It’s a set of essential psychological skills for our fast-changing, complex world: skills that allow us to remain engaged, open, and values-connected and to reincorporate our most challenging feelings as sources of energy, creativity, and insight.
Emotional agility capacities are at the heart of mental health, wellbeing, culture, collaboration, innovation – everything that matters to healthy people, organisations, and communities. Now more than ever, they are crucial.
Susan David PhD Keynote Speaker:
Featured in the Thinkers50 global list of the top management thinkers, Dr Susan David is a sought-after keynote speaker and advisor. Her clients include The World Economic Forum, Ernst & Young, The United Nations, Google, Microsoft, Nasdaq, and many other national and multinational organisations.
An award-winning Harvard Medical School psychologist, Susan offers unique expertise in cultivating more agile, healthy, resilient, and authentically happy people, families, workplaces, and communities.
Speaking Topics:
Susan focuses on the essential human skills needed to navigate complexity and change. They are practical, powerful, and tailored to audience needs.
Recent examples include:
- Human Skills in the AI Economy. As knowledge becomes commoditised and stress and complexity grow, the need for emotional skills is escalating. This critical gap affects every employee.
- Emotional Agility for Leading through Transformation. Emotional Agility is the primary determinant of successful organisational transformation and is essential for leaders and team members alike.
- Fostering Wellbeing and Positive Organisational Culture. The vital skills that empower people to create a positive culture, build effective teams, and promote well-being are present in every organisation and can be harnessed to drive positive change.
She frequently contributes to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and appears as a guest on national radio and television.
Dr Susan David trained as a clinical psychologist. She completed her PhD and postdoctoral work at Yale University in emotion research.
She is on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and co-founded the Institute of Coaching (a Harvard Medical School/McLean affiliate).
Dr David lives with her family outside of Boston, USA.
