Dominic Thurbon Speaking Topics

• The Closer

  A great conference deserves a great ending—one that leaves attendees inspired, energized, and ready to take action. Too often, the closing session is overlooked, yet research shows that the final moments of an event have a lasting impact.

  Dominic Thurbon’s "locknote" is a unique, dynamic, and deeply personalized closing keynote that does more than recap content. With nearly two decades of experience as a world top-10 debater, speaker, and facilitator, Dominic masterfully distills key themes in real time, ensuring the conference ends on a high note with actionable insights.

  This one-of-a-kind closing experience:

  • Summarizes key themes in an engaging, insightful, and humorous way.
  • Operationalizes learning, helping attendees turn insights into action.
  • Energizes delegates, leaving them motivated and inspired.

  Audience Takeaways:

  • Clear, connected insights that tie together the conference’s biggest lessons.
  • Practical strategies for applying new knowledge in work and life.
  • An inspiring close that ensures attendees leave feeling uplifted and ready to take action.

  Unlike a generic closing speech, Dominic fully immerses himself in the event, integrating real-time insights to create a seamless, engaging finale. His "locknote" ensures your conference doesn’t just end—it leaves a lasting impact.

• The Truthful Leader

  How businesses unlock value and drive growth through the simple act of telling the truth

  So much value in business lies, untapped, behind an inability or unwillingness to tell the truth. Increased innovation, improved agility and change responsiveness, deeper engagement of teams and better financial outcomes are all fuelled by telling the truth.

  And yet we live in a world where telling the truth increasingly seems like an optional luxury

  • a world dominated by 'fake news' and 'alternative facts'. In fact, despite its importance and its power, evidence suggests we are getting worse at it, not better!

  For example, in a fact-check of the winning 2024 campaign for US President, only 3% of statements scored ‘true’. False stories are 70% more likely to be shared on social media than true ones, and spread up to 20 times faster. An ACCC review found 37% of businesses studied were engaging in ‘concerning conduct’ when it came to telling the truth.

  The fact is that telling the truth is a behavior, you're either doing it or you're not! And it's a behavior that can improve and transform your business. So, in this dynamic, provocative, and deeply practical presentation, Dominic Thurbon, leadership and behavior change keynote speaker, will:

  • Look at why and how telling the truth is so important to your business in driving performance, innovation, engagement and agility
  • Explore why it's hard, why it often doesn't happen, and the effect that is having on us as leaders and business owners, and on our teams
  • Look at the three levels of truth-telling (self, sector, system) that are most important to improving your performance
  • Unlock a toolkit for 'making truth happen' inside your business in a way that drives change, improves outcomes and unlocks value

• The Human Element of AI Adoption

  How to get beyond the hype and start extracting breakthrough value from AI

  Every company is talking about AI, but they’re not all getting value from AI. Having built and sold an AI-enabled tech company, Dominic Thurbon, behavior change and AI leadership keynote speaker, knows first hand the ones that are view AI as a people challenge first, and a technology challenge second.

  That’s because with technology like AI, companies don’t change, people do.

  For example, according to recent research from 2024, the companies getting the most value from AI are spending twice as much on people as they are on algos and tech. Gen AI “high performers’ do a much better job of helping everyone understand value and risks of AI in their daily job (52%) compared to those not getting value (only 21%)… this is what I mean by people first, tech second.

  So, in this dynamic, provocative and practically useful session we will:

  • Unpack the ‘why’, the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of leading edge Gen AI technologies and share compelling, industry- and role-relevant case studies of how companies are getting value
  • Look at the human element of AI integration, and how ensure that our teams are set up and structured to adopt and get value from these new tools
  • Unpack the practical risk management and governance mindsets and frameworks required to avoid pitfalls and perils while still making progress

  Draw on Dom’s first-hand experiences building and selling an AI-enabled technology company to bring a real on-the-ground perspective the conversation.

• Making Behavior Change Happen

  Using the science of human behavior to unlock innovation, navigate change and improve results

  You have a behavior change challenge… you just don’t know it yet!!

  Ever heard someone in your business say “we need to be more innovative”, “we need to respond to disruption” or “we need to do things differently”?

  I’m sure you have

  • after all, we are doing business amidst profound disruption. About 40% of CEOs say their business will cease to exist within 10 years without radical reinvention!

  But the truth is, it doesn’t matter how much you know about innovation, how many books you’ve read on AI and disruption, how many podcasts you’ve listened to on sales effectiveness… if you can’t do behavior change, you can’t do, any of them.

  Conversely, if you can master the art and science of behavior change, you can take you and your team’s performance to a whole new level— a core focus of Dominic Thurbon, behavior change and leadership keynote speaker.

  In this provocative and interactive session, we will:

  • Unpack the core drivers of human behavior, and the 5 universal responses to change you will encounter in your team
  • Examine how organizations don’t change, people do

    • and how learning the art and science of behavior change can drive your agenda

  • Share inspiring, industry-relevant case studies and stories that are packed with usable insights and apply them to leadership, marketing, sales, change and staff engagement
  • Unpack a toolkit we can use to be more effective in making change happen inside our organizations

• Purpose, On Purpose

  Making the most of ESG, sustainability and the purpose movement

  The market has never been so hot for conversations about purpose, sustainability and ESG. On one level, that’s brilliant: it could herald in a new age of sustainable business and accelerate our transition to a cleaner, more just, more equitable world (and help companies innovate and transform, along the way).

  On another level, it runs the very real risk of going the way that many similar conversations have gone before: more marketing and PR hype than action.

  The truth is, you cannot PR your way out of a problem you behaved yourself into. If we want to get real value both as a business and as a society out of sustainability, ESG and corporate purpose, we have to turn words into action and intent into impact.

  As Dominic Thurbon, ESG and behavior-change keynote speaker emphasizes, organizations succeed only when purpose is embedded into behaviors, systems, and leadership — not slogans.

  In this dynamic and engaging session, we will:

  • Look at the value and the drivers of ‘purpose’ in business, and how you bring it to life for both customers and staff
  • Demistify what ESG and sustainability mean for you and your team examine mega-trends that drive both the risks and opportunities of ESG
  • Unpack the oft-misunderstood link between ESG, sustainability and corporate ‘purpose’
  • Develop practical, usable strategies that can help you leverage the ESG agenda to drive greater sustainability and improved performance

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