Global Speaker, Interviewer and Leadership Trailblazer
Holly Ransom
Speaking Fee: $20,000 to $30,000
Travels From:
Primary Topic Category: Moderators
Secondary Topic Category: Business & Entrepreneurship
Holly Ransom At A Glance:
At five years old, Holly’s Grandmother Dorothy said to her “Honey, if you walk past it, you tell the world it’s okay.” Holly has devoted her life and leadership to this mantra ever since; inspiring audiences around the globe to stand up and lead the change they care enough to make. Holly has compressed a power-packed career into a decade, spanning corporate, non-profit, and public sectors. Through her leadership consulting firm, Emergent, she has produced real-world results for clients such as P&G, Microsoft, Virgin, Cisco, and KPMG. Holly is also an accomplished board director for organizations such as Port Adelaide Football Club and Hudson. A proud champion for diversity and inclusion, Holly is Chair of Pride Cup Australia and devoted to challenging LGBTI+ discrimination within sporting clubs
At the age of five, Holly’s grandmother, Dorothy, told her, “Honey, if you walk past it, you tell the world it’s okay,” and she has lived by that mantra ever since, devoting her life and career to inspiring audiences around the world to stand up and lead the change they want to see. Today, Holly is recognized globally for her unique ability to take complex ideas and problems, grind them down, and restructure them in a way that everyone can understand. She is the founder and CEO of consulting firm, Emergent; author of The Leading Edge; co-founder, chief curator, and catalyst at Energy Disruptors, winning ‘Best Conference’ in Canada for its work up catalyzing collaboration across the energy industry.
As a renowned speaker and master interviewer, Holly has led discussions with influential figures such as Barack Obama, Malcolm Gladwell, , Billie Jean-King, Condoleezza Rice, Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, and the world’s first humanoid robot, Sophia. She even delivered a Peace Charter to the Dalai Lama. Due to this work, Holly was named one of Australia’s 100 Most Influential Women by the Australian Financial Review and was awarded the US Embassy’s Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Leadership Excellence in 2019.
To top it off, Sir Richard Branson nominated her for Wired Magazine’s ‘Smart List’ of Future Game Changers to watch. While being a Fulbright scholar and part of the Harvard Kennedy School Class of ’21 fellow, Holly was a recipient of the prestigious Anne Wexler Public Policy Scholarship, allowing her to take action on social and economic inclusion by connecting people directly with the decisions that affect their lives. H Holly’s book, The Leading Edge, is democratizing leadership learning by igniting individuals ability to accelerate change through asking better questions, thinking beyond biased answers, and establishing a groundswell for advancement. An accomplished company director in her own right, Holly has compressed a power-packed career into a decade, spanning corporate, non-profit, and public sectors.
Working with big-name clients such as P&G, Microsoft, Virgin, Cisco, and KPMG to effect and inspire actual change. On occasion, Holly will grace Australian screens commentating for Reuters, CBS, and Australia’s ABC,. Holly’s fierce dedication to Chair of Pride Cup Australia, a non-profit organization and movement devoted to eradicating LGBTQI+ discrimination within sporting clubs, while making them secure and welcoming for players and fans.
But even before all this, Holly was identified early as a dynamic thought leader and asked to Chair the G20 Youth Summit in 2014, the United Nations Coalition of Young Women Entrepreneurs in 2016, and became the youngest director ever to be appointed to an Australian Football Club, Port Adelaide, one of the 18 teams in the professional Australian Football League. A two-time ironwoman, when Holly does manage to find some downtime, she loves to cook, dance, and sing… despite her complete lack of talent at all three.
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Bridging the knowing-to-doing gap
High performance workplace cultures empower people to know better, and do better. At a time when companies are struggling to engage younger generations, retain women, and secure the skills that will drive the future, building a vibrant learning culture is critical.
With a set of powerful leadership tools gleaned from interviewing hundreds of the world’s top leaders, Holly will share a relevant set of micro-learnings to help people bridge what she terms ‘the implementation chasm’ in order to catalyze change.
Covering:
•Peak performance
•Managing energy not time
•Holding ourselves accountable
•Values that stick
•High-performance habits -
Feet to the fire: asking the burning questions
Getting DEI right requires asking, and answering, the right questions. Psychological safety underpins inclusion, innovation, and problem solving. Yet homogenised and hierarchical workplace cultures continue. Holly has been working in gender equality and LGBTQIA+ inclusion collectively for over a decade, from microfinance projects in Kenya to systemic change within Fortune 100 companies.
Learn the leaders toolkit of DEI actions we all need to embed in our systems, structures and mindsets, in order to benefit from diverse perspectives in our world.
Covers:
•Critical curiosity
•Systems thinking
•Creativity is serious business
•Diversify our dice
•Psychological safety -
Getting comfortable being uncomfortable
Holly spent one full year challenging herself to do something that scared her every single day. She calls this the Year of Fear. Leaders benefit from bringing into consciousness the daily subliminal dance with fear, and shining a light on achieving tasks outside their comfort zone.
Holly teaches people how to navigate uncertainty and prepare for the unknown, our organizations benefit from thinking outside the box in order to see around corners. Holly teaches simple, actionable, micro-lessons that everyone can harness to face fear and lead more bravely.
Covering:
•Chunking down the change journey
•Comfort zone to courage zone
•Building trust
•Developing a growth mindset -
Leadership development for the collective
Emergent leadership harnesses the power of the collective to anticipate, understand and action new information.
Every person on earth was born to lead change. Yet we continue to over-invest in a few individuals and under-invest in the many. Holly breaks open the power of the roles we play in our teams, our communities, and our families to catalyze change. She teaches not only the leadership lessons but also ways to share them and pay forward a bigger movement for change.
Covering:
•Communicating for impact
•Building influence
•Leading others
•Feedback, feedforward
•Critical conversations
I see Holly as a new kind of leader and a fresh voice. She's optimistic and positive, but realistic. A mentor and a mentee. She brings a much needed female, millenial voice to conversations on leadership - and frankly we don't get to experience that enough, especially at high profile events.— Angela Priestley, Women's Agenda
Inspirational, thought provoking, and unique-Holly is all of these and more.— Microsoft
Holly has thoroughly impressed me with her knowledge, poise and new ideas. I suspect you'll be hearing from her in the future as more and more female CEOs come to the force, changind business for good.— Richard Branson
Holly Ransom is a dynamo: unusually knowledgeable, engaging, and thought-provoking. She has a real gift for bringing insights to life and drawing out the best ideas in the room.— Adam Grant, Organizational Psychologist and Bestselling Author
Holly’s ability to weave an organization’s purpose, event themes and insights from global thought leaders together to tell transformational stories is unmatched. Putting her in front of our industry on PCMA’s biggest stage elevates the caliber of our general sessions and our audience looks forward to seeing her each year.— Carrie Johnson, PCMA, Senior Education Director
