Sophie Wade

Sophie Wade is a work futurist, international keynote speaker, and authority on future-of-work issues. Throughout her career, Wade has worked at or consulted with large corporations and startups in strategy and finance roles, assisting entrepreneurs and major corporations in building teams, ventures, and partnerships. She has held senior management, strategy, and finance positions globally, working in media, technology, and venture capital for companies such as IMG and Yahoo. Wade holds a Bachelor of Arts from Oxford University in Oriental Studies (Chinese) and an MBA from INSEAD in France. Her multinational background, spanning work across five countries, provides a broad perspective on the evolution and diversity of work cultures worldwide.

Wade founded Flexcel Network to advocate for and expand the implementation of workplace flexibility. As a workforce innovation specialist with Flexcel Network, her advisory work and workshops help executives and managers adapt to evolving business conditions and attract, engage, and retain multigenerational distributed workforces. Wade supports business leaders with work and workforce innovation, human-AI integration, and the transformation of business models, operations, and careers as artificial intelligence accelerates change. Her data-driven approach and cross-sector experience position her as a strategic partner for organizations navigating complex change.

Wade is the author of two books on the future of work. Her first book, "Embracing Progress: Next Steps for the Future of Work," has been used as an Executive MBA Program textbook and required reading in management school leadership courses. Her second book, "Empathy Works: The Key to Competitive Advantage in the New Era of Work," explores empathy as a critical corporate value, mindset, and skill for improving engagement, productivity, and sustained growth. Wade has also contributed articles to MIT Sloan Management, Fast Company, and Fortune.

She hosts the "Transforming Work" podcast and has developed five LinkedIn courses covering future-of-work skills, Generation Z, and empathy, which have reached more than 550,000 learners and been translated into six languages. Drawing on neuroscience and behavioral psychology, Wade explains empathy with practical examples, measurement methods, and techniques to understand coworkers' emotions and enhance leadership, engagement, and productivity.

Wade has served as president of the New York City chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners and on the national Presidents' Assembly Steering Committee. She is also a member of the New York Advisory Board of Common Sense Media. As an international keynote speaker and author of The Work In Progress Report newsletter, Wade writes and speaks regularly about modern work, human-centric leadership, AI-driven workforce evolution, distributed teams, empathy at work, talent mobility, and self-directed careers. Her work informs how organizations and leaders approach the evolving relationship between people, technology, and the workplace.