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Provocateurs
Provocateurs play a critical role in the summit experience. They help surface the real tensions leaders are navigating—especially where innovation, ethics, emotion, and human impact intersect.
Provocateurs are not keynote speakers, influencers, or performers.
They are steady contributors who help create meaningful dialogue within breakout sessions and guided conversations.
Provocateurs
Provocateurs play a critical role in the summit experience. They help surface the real tensions leaders are navigating—especially where innovation, ethics, emotion, and human impact intersect.
Provocateurs are not keynote speakers, influencers, or performers.
They are steady contributors who help create meaningful dialogue within breakout sessions and guided conversations.
Become a Provocateur
Contribute Perspective. Hold Complexity. Invite Better Questions.
Are grounded in lived experience or thoughtful practice
Can engage complex topics without oversimplifying them
Are comfortable facilitating inquiry rather than providing answers
Align with values-rooted, intelligence-fluent leadership
Provocateurs play a critical role in the summit experience. They help surface the real tensions leaders are navigating—especially where innovation, ethics, emotion, and human impact intersect.
This role is designed for individuals who:
Provocateurs are not keynote speakers, influencers, or performers.
They are steady contributors who help create meaningful dialogue within breakout sessions and guided conversations.
If you feel called to contribute in this way, we invite you to apply.
Our 2026 Provocateurs
Bill Jensen
Bill Jensen is a visionary leader, results-driven strategist, problem-solver, globally-known keynote speaker, and author of ten best-selling leadership books, including Simplicity, Disrupt, and Future Strong. As CEO and Chief Transformation Officer at the Jensen Group, Bill is a trusted advisor to C-suite executives in implementing complex, AI-driven, enterprise-wide changes. His superpower: Translating AI/digital transformation into people transformation.
He is globally ranked in the Top Ten thought leaders in the Future of Work and Cultural Transformation.
His new book Humanity: Leading the Powershift Keeping Humans in the Future of Work gives you the frameworks to lead with humanity at the center and every registrant receives a complimentary, pre-release copy. Learn more.
Session: AI Is a Powershift, Not a Taskshift
Rethinking Work, Workforce, and Leadership in the AI Era
Tarletta Williams
Tarletta Williams, widely recognized as "The Marketing Mechanic," is a seasoned digital marketing and systems strategist dedicated to turning operational chaos into streamlined success. As the founder of Your Marketing Mechanic, she empowers coaches, speakers, and educators to step out of the daily grind by implementing powerful automation and efficient workflows. With over six years of deep industry experience spanning websites, funnels, and CRM infrastructure, Tarletta specializes in connecting disjointed tools into unified, predictable engines of growth.
Her actionable, high-energy approach helps business owners eliminate backend friction and reclaim their time without sacrificing a warm, human client experience. An expert speaker and host of the Mechanix Memo podcast, she routinely inspires audiences to think strategically about scaling their operations with absolute confidence. Bringing that exact passion for precision, structure, and high-impact momentum to her role, Tarletta is thrilled to serve as the chair for this event.
Co-Chair, 2026 Summit
Rick Loek
Richard “The AMAZING Rick” Loek is a Sacramento-based entrepreneur, fiduciary wealth manager, AI automation architect, and coach to professionals and entrepreneurs. He is the founder of the AI Lab for Leaders - a structured, judgment-first environment built on one non-negotiable premise: AI does not replace leadership. It exposes it.
Rick spent his early career as a software engineer, earning a reputation for delivering difficult projects. In 2006 he made a deliberate transition into financial services. By 2012 he had founded Onesta Wealth Management, a Registered Investment Advisor firm he continues to operate today. He is a Retirement Income Certified Professional, an Investment Advisor Representative, and a member of Ed Slott’s Master Elite IRA Group. His leadership style was forged managing software development teams and a range of community organizations.
Rick coaches professionals and entrepreneurs who are ready to think more clearly, lead more accountably, and use AI as a mirror—not a crutch.
Co-Chair, 2026 Summit | Session: Introduction to AI Lab
Actually
Actually is a conversational AI experience designed to provoke reflection, challenge assumptions, and deepen leadership thinking in the Age of Intelligence. Rather than providing answers, Actually engages participants in adaptive dialogue, asking reflective questions about leadership, values, decision-making, uncertainty, and human judgment.
Session Title: Meaning-Making | An AI & Human Collaboration
Anish Padinjaroote
Anish Padinjaroote is Group CHRO for Amnex Technologies, and is a human capital and AI transformation leader with 22+ years of global experience across strategy, culture, organizational design, and the future of work. He operates at the fault line between technology and humanity; advising CEOs, CHROs, and boards as AI reshapes how power flows, how work is defined, and how people are valued. He has built and scaled people- and culture-systems in high-growth, AI-led organizations, enabling 5x workforce expansion, while redefining performance, leadership, and employee experience at scale.
Anish is the founder of HARE People, a global collective focused on the future of work, and an active voice in global HR and AI leadership communities.
Allyson Ward
Allyson Ward is a leadership resilience expert, keynote speaker, and two-time #1 bestselling author who helps high-achieving leaders sustain peak performance without sacrificing their presence, purpose, or peace. As a former IBM executive and Senior Trainer for Tony Robbins, she brings 20 years of corporate leadership and two decades of human performance research to every room she enters.
She is the creator of the Gracefully Bold™ framework and author of Demolish Your Stress: Maintaining Excellence Without Burnout, and has guided more than 250,000 professionals across 70+ events.
As President of The Capstone Group, she works with corporations, associations, and government agencies to build cultures where people and performance thrive together.
Session Title: AI Won’t Fix Your Culture. It Will Expose It.
Cara-Lyn Giovanniello
Cara-Lyn is a strategic partner specializing in empowering startups and high-growth companies to unlock their potential, scale effectively, and build resilient, values-driven cultures.
With over 20 years of experience, Cara-Lyn partners with organizations to boost engagement, increase retention, and create scalable systems that grow alongside their businesses.
Website: www.theartoflearnedintelligence.com
Session Title: The Art of Learned Intelligence – Mastering EQ, RQ, CQ, and SQ in the Age of AI
Joshua B. Lee
Joshua B. Lee is a founder, strategist, and speaker known for helping leaders become the trusted answer in a world increasingly shaped by AI and intelligent systems. After building 16 companies and managing nearly $1B in advertising spend, Joshua realized something most founders miss: expertise alone does not create authority. The market only recognizes what it can clearly understand, categorize, and trust. This insight led him to develop the concept of Authority Architecture - the discipline of transforming deep expertise into recognized authority through structured signals such as intellectual territory, narrative clarity, frameworks, and trust signals.
As the founder of StandOut Authority and creator of YOUmanize™, Joshua focuses on helping leaders ensure their voice, perspective, and lived experience remain visible and trusted as AI increasingly mediates how knowledge is discovered. His work blends human-centered leadership, narrative strategy, and AI-era visibility to help leaders move from being knowledgeable to being recognized and ultimately, from being one voice among many to becoming a trusted answer.
Joshua is also recognized as the #1 LinkedIn growth expert in the United States and #6 globally, helping leaders and organizations navigate visibility, trust, and authority in an AI-driven world
Session Title: If AI Becomes the Filter for Trust, What Defines Leadership?
Malisha Awunor
Malisha Awunor is a technology-for-good strategist, with 25+ years of global experience across strategy, behavioral science, and the future of work. She is a firm believer that access to technology is not a privilege, but a right. Her work sits at the intersection of emerging technology and humanity exploring how we ensure that, as AI advances, humanity is not diminished but is elevated.
She advises boards and executive teams on navigating the shifts AI is bringing to organisational design, digital equity, and the meaning of human value at work.
Malisha is the founder of Ikigai People Advisory Services, a director of the FutureShift and Movement-for-Good NPC’s, and the creator of the I AM virtual reality bias-protocol.
Podcast Co-host / Provocateur: Powershift / Agency
“Who’s gaining and who’s losing power because of AI?"
Jenny Bates Heaton
Jenny Bates Heaton is the founder of Bates Leadership, where she enables talent strategies through leaders and systems. Her perspective is shaped via leading organization development at complex global organizations such as Ahold Delhaize and Syngenta.
She is an innovator at heart and at the front end of change to such an extent that she is often described as a "talent futurist."
Podcast Co-host / Provocateur: Human+AI Partnerships
“Have you figured out what people can do that machines can’t?”
Rosie Corvo
Rosie Corvo is a strategic advisor and leadership development coach for senior leaders facing high-stakes decisions and complex team dynamics. With deep operating experience from C-suite and senior roles at Bank of America, Barclays UK, and Early Warning (leading the branding and launch of Zelle®), she offers an integrated perspective on strategy, execution, and governance. She partners with executives on leadership development, strategic planning, and organizational alignment, focusing on simplifying complexity and defining clear paths forward. Rosie lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with her husband, two children, and their dog, Sophie.
Podcast Facilitator: Powershift / Agency
“Who’s gaining and who’s losing power because of AI?”
Podcast Facilitator: Human+AI Partnerships
“Have you figured out what people can do that machines can’t?”
Kyle Campbell
Kyle Campbell is a talent and organizational capability leader who works at the intersection of people, creativity, and the future of work. He serves as Vice President of Talent Management at Reliance Matrix, where he leads enterprise‑wide efforts across talent strategy, leadership development, and professional capability building, partnering closely with leaders to improve decision quality and organizational effectiveness.
Alongside a professional career spanning over 30 years, Kyle has spent more than 35 years as a working musician, touring, writing, and recording across a wide range of projects.
Moving between structured corporate environments and the improvisational world of music has shaped how he thinks about creativity—not as a moment of inspiration, but as a discipline built through constraints, collaboration, and practice. Kyle brings this dual perspective to his work with leaders, helping organizations rethink how creativity shows up at work and how it can be supported—especially as AI continues to reshape how ideas are generated, refined, and brought to life.
Session Title: The Summit Song: A Live Co-Creation Experience
Jutta Eckstein
Jutta Eckstein works as an independent coach, consultant, and trainer. She has recently co-created an assessment for (agile) teams to gauge the environmental, social, and economic impact of their products and services. Besides that, she has published her experience in various books, having pair-written the most recent one with John Buck on Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy (dubbed BOSSA nova).
Jutta has served the board of the Agile Alliance (from 2003-2007) and has recently founded the “Agile Sustainability Initiative” which aims at increasing the awareness of the Agile community’s possibilities to make a difference. She’s a member of the program committee of many different American, Asian, and European conferences, where she has presented her work. She holds an M.A. in Business Coaching & Change Management, a Dipl.Eng. (MSc.) in Product-Engineering, and is trained as a pollution control commissioner on ecological environmentalism.
Curt Meinhold
Curt Meinhold is a technology executive and entrepreneur based in Greensboro, North Carolina, with over 25 years of experience leading product and engineering teams in startup and consulting environments. His career spans everything from early web development to guiding strategic infrastructure and product decisions for hundreds of companies - including three of his own. Today, his focus is bridging the gap between emerging technology and human connection.
Curt's belief in the power of narrative led him to found LilyList, a platform dedicated to preserving digital legacies through curation over collection, a philosophy also explored in his book, LilyList: The First 26.
For more information, visit: theflux.com, lilylist.com
Session Title: Leadership Through Waves Of Change
Ken Judy
Ken Judy has spent more than 25 years in roles from developer to CEO: writing code, leading teams, and helping organizations figure out what AI actually changes about how they work. He led modernization efforts as an executive at Oxygen Media (NBCU), Simon & Schuster (CBS Paramount), and The Daily Beast. As a Senior Partner at Stride, he builds agentic workflows and consults with organizations seeking effective AI Adoption.
Ken has developed a Plan-Do-Check-Act framework for responsible human-AI collaboration, keeping people accountable and in control as they operate AI agents.
A CTA Certified Coach, he has written about agile practice and AI Adoption for InfoQ and the Agile Alliance Blog. Ken lives in Brooklyn, New York.
John Sanborn
John Sanborn is a public-sector learning and workforce development executive who has led statewide efforts to prepare California’s workforce for moments of rapid change. As the former Chief Learning Officer for the State of California, John helped advance enterprise learning strategy, leadership development, and responsible GenAI training across one of the nation’s largest public workforces.
His work sits at the intersection of government, trust, workforce readiness, and emerging technology. John brings a practitioner’s perspective on how public institutions can adopt AI with both urgency and restraint, balancing innovation with accountability, transparency, equity, and the human impact of decisions made at scale.
John is especially interested in the tension between public trust in government’s use of AI and government employees’ own readiness to trust, question, and responsibly use these tools.
Jerry Abrams
Jerry Abrams is Founder and President of Stratalyst.ai, where he works at the intersection of organization development, leadership, and AI-enabled transformation. A senior OD practitioner, Jerry brings deep experience in leadership development, organizational learning, and the human dynamics of change. His current work explores how generative AI can amplify judgment, reshape work, and challenge leaders to build more adaptive, human-centered organizations.
Rachel B. Lee
Rachel B. Lee is a LinkedIn Top Voice, Co-Owner of Standout Authority and Co-Founder of YOUmanize™. A former brand leader at Microsoft and Gartner, she supports business owners and executives to build trust and visibility through their personal brand and digital presence.
YOUmanize™ is a human credibility intelligence platform, and she’s Co-host of the YOUmanize™ Your Brand podcast. She speaks at global events and has been featured in The Washington Post, CBS, and more. Her work focuses on helping professionals thrive in an AI-driven world by showing up authentically and strategically online.
Christopher Gray
Chris is a team coach and formerly led the Conscious Leadership program for Asana. He has worked as a developer and spent many years in product management at companies ranging from startups to large organizations, including Facebook.
His philosophy with team coaching is simple, yet often challenging to achieve: “Make the invisible visible. So it can become workable.”
When not supporting teams, Chris leads Relational Leadership workshops and retreats. He currently lives in Oakland, California, with his wife, Lisa.
Anne Hunnex
Anne Hunnex spent her career building IT Project Management teams and PMOs in major financial services, insurance, and manufacturing organizations. She has been involved in several organizational transformations and gains her energy from working with people who have the vision and leadership to move an organization forward.
Her passion has been to evolve flexible and innovative cultures that focus on business results while developing individual potential.
In retirement, Anne applies her project management and leadership skills by volunteering for non-profits focused on social justice and women’s economic empowerment. Wherever she goes, Anne emphasizes learning and has developed training programs on leadership, change management, and cultural change.
A Note on Discernment
Not everyone needs to lead from the front—and not every season calls for the same level of visibility.
We encourage you to choose the role that aligns with your capacity, clarity, and sense of responsibility right now. Each form of participation strengthens the summit in a different way.
However you engage, your presence matters when it is offered with intention.
The 2026 Summit advances conscious leadership for a rapidly changing world by exploring the multiple intelligences (human, emotional, technological, and ethical) required to lead with wisdom today. Rooted in values and built for transformation, this summit strengthens the integration of your deepest principles, your evolving intelligence, and the realities of this new era into a cooperative operating system for leadership.
Schedule
July 8-10, 2026
Daily (Eastern Time):
Session 1 | 10:00 - 12:00
Break | 12:00 - 1:00
Session 2| 1:00 - 3:00