As Global Co-Creation Director in Version 1's Office of the CTO, Cleo works at the front lines of AI adoption across public and private sector organisations. She works inside technology organisations as well as alongside them, which means she understands both the strategic ambition and the human reality of what it actually takes to make change land. She built a change framework from field evidence, grounded in the conviction that the benefits of AI are only unlocked through people-led adoption, and that requires individual and organisational conditions to move together.

Audiences consistently describe her as thought-provoking and deeply practical. At the Common Purpose Senior Leaders programme, where over 40 contributors spoke across an eight-month leadership journey, several participants named her among the best speakers they had ever heard. At the Dublin Tech Summit, Siobhan Human, Corporate Events lead at Stripe, described her as a standout voice whose insights translated emerging trends into meaningful steps leaders can take now. Her contribution to the EX Summit at FUEL left the room, in the words of Shell Holden, Director of Marketing at FUEL, not only inspired, but ready to take action.

Her track record includes designing Level 9 certified future skills programmes, securing Enterprise Ireland funding for skills innovation, and leading Version 1's enterprise-wide AI adoption programme. She has spoken at Learnovation at Trinity College Dublin, the Irish Hotels Federation Tech Summit, and EMCC Ireland, consistently helping senior audiences move from anxiety to agency.

Grounded in 18 years of senior leadership across global L&D and organisational development, and holding postgraduate qualifications in Organisational Development and Transformation, Organisational Behaviour, Executive Coaching, and Business Psychology, Cleo is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, EMCC Senior Practitioner, NLP Practitioner, and Master Practitioner in Workplace Resilience and Wellbeing.

Real transformation happens when we bring our people with us, and when we are intentional about what we are asking technology to do on our behalf.

Speaker Topics

1. The Human Side of AI: Why Adoption Is the Real Transformation Challenge

We are experiencing a rate of change never seen before. Attention is finite. Change fatigue is real. And yet the biggest barrier to AI success is rarely the technology itself. It is the human conditions that determine whether it lands, sticks, and delivers real value. In this environment, purpose, mission, and vision are not motivational wallpaper. They are the navigational infrastructure that helps people make sense of why change is worth the effort. Cleo draws on her experience leading enterprise-wide AI adoption and a reimagined change framework, built from real field intelligence, to show what actually moves people from scepticism to skilled, confident use. This is not a talk about technology. It is a talk about trust, identity, and behaviour change at scale.

2. The End of the Knowledge Leader: Wayfinder, Sense Maker, Human Change Agent

AI has democratised knowledge. Every person in your organisation now has access to the same information as the person at the top. The leader as the sole source of answers is gone, and that changes everything. But it also opens something extraordinary. When leaders are freed from the pressure of having all the answers, they can become something far more valuable: a wayfinder who navigates complexity without a map, a sense maker who helps people find meaning and direction in the midst of uncertainty, and a human change agent who creates the conditions for others to bring their best thinking, courage, and creativity to what comes next. Today's leadership requires something far more human and far more demanding than knowledge alone: the agility to navigate a world where change is not episodic but constant, the wisdom to envision a future that does not yet exist, and the deeply human skills to bring others with you when the old playbook no longer applies. This talk explores what leadership must become in a BANI world, brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible, and what it takes to lead with clarity, courage, and humanity when everything around you is shifting.

3. Reading the Room: Signals of Change and the Future of Work

Nobody can prepare for everything. The organisations that thrive are the ones that prepare for anything. That distinction matters enormously. It is the difference between trying to predict an unpredictable future and building the foresight, imagination, and adaptive capacity to meet whatever comes next with confidence. This talk helps leaders develop the habit of signal reading: how to spot emerging patterns across technology, society, demographics, and culture before they become trends that demand a reaction. It explores how to envision futures that do not yet exist, how to reimagine what your organisation could become, and crucially, what must be unlearned before something genuinely new can take its place. The organisations that thrive will not just be resilient. They will be antifragile, designed to grow stronger because of disruption, not despite it. Provocative, practical, and built for leaders who want to shape the future rather than simply respond to it.

4. Three Processors, One Decision: Unlocking Your Full Intelligence in a World of Too Much Choice

We are living in an era of infinite information and endless options. The paradox is that more choice is not making leaders more decisive. It is making them more paralysed. The problem is not a lack of data. It is that most leaders are running their decisions on a single processor, the rational mind, while two extraordinarily powerful sources of intelligence sit largely unused. This talk introduces a framework for integrated decision making that draws on cognitive science, NLP, and organisational psychology to help leaders unlock the full capacity of head, heart, and gut working together. When all three processors run in parallel, decisions become clearer, faster, and more aligned with both purpose and instinct. In a BANI world where certainty is rare and the stakes are high, that is not a soft skill. It is a leadership superpower.

5. Hearts and Minds: The Change Leadership Skills That Actually Work

Most transformation programmes fail not because the strategy is wrong, but because the human change work is underestimated. The organisations that get this right do not just become more resilient. They become antifragile, building adaptive capacity that makes them stronger each time they navigate change. Cleo draws on nearly two decades of organisational development practice and a reimagined change framework to show what effective change leadership looks like from the inside: the conversations, habits, rituals, and leadership behaviours that make transformation real rather than rhetorical.

6. Wing Skills, Portfolio Careers, and the High-Performing Teams of Tomorrow

The era of the linear career is over. The rise of AI is accelerating a profound shift in how people build expertise, contribute value, and construct working lives. This talk explores the concept of wing skills, the capabilities that sit alongside core expertise and increasingly define a person's adaptability and impact, alongside the growth of portfolio careers and what both mean for how organisations attract, develop, and lead high-performing teams. Candid, forward-looking, and full of practical implication for leaders building capability for an uncertain future.

7. The Future Skills That Actually Matter: Building Human Capability for the AI Era

The skills gap is real. But organisations are solving the wrong problem. Cleo challenges the assumption that future skills are primarily technical and makes a compelling case for cognitive agility, critical thinking, ethical judgement, and sense-making as the true currencies of the AI era. She shares what a genuinely future-facing skills strategy looks like, built from her experience designing accredited programmes and securing innovation funding.

8. Co-Creation as a Leadership Superpower

The command-and-control model is not just outdated. In an AI-enabled world, it is actively dangerous. This talk makes the case for co-creation as the defining leadership practice of our time: what it means, why it works, and how leaders can build the psychological safety and shared ownership that makes innovation stick. Practical, evidence-based, and genuinely energising.

9. Beyond Belonging: Building Cultures Where People Feel They Matter

Belonging has become the dominant conversation in workplace culture. But belonging is not enough. You can belong to something and still feel invisible, replaceable, and disconnected from purpose. This talk makes the case for mattering as the next frontier of leadership and culture: the difference between people who show up and people who are fully present, between teams that function and teams that genuinely thrive. Drawing on organisational development practice, behavioural science, and real experience working with service-led and people-centred organisations, Cleo gives leaders a practical framework for building cultures where every person, at every level, knows that what they do and who they are makes a genuine difference.

10. Resilience Reimagined: Building Ecosystems of Healthy High Performance

Workplace resilience has been trivialised by tick-box wellbeing initiatives and hustle culture in equal measure. Both get it wrong because both treat resilience as an individual responsibility rather than an organisational design challenge. In an always-on world where the pressure never fully lifts, the question is not how do we help people cope better. It is how do we build an ecosystem where healthy high performance is the norm, not the exception. As a Master Practitioner in Workplace Resilience and Wellbeing, Cleo reframes resilience as a cognitive, cultural, and leadership capability, drawing on the latest research to give leaders a grounded, practical model for creating the conditions where people and organisations can genuinely thrive, not just survive.

11. Human and Machine: Deciding What AI Should Do and What Only We Can

AI can accelerate almost anything. But acceleration without intention is just faster chaos. The real question leaders must answer is not what AI can do, but what humans should do, and how we design technology deliberately around that distinction. This talk challenges leaders to move beyond efficiency as the primary measure of AI value and to ask harder, more important questions about purpose, ethics, and what it means to use technology as a genuine force for good. Not as idealism. As a strategy.

Speaker Credentials at a Glance

• Global Co-Creation Director, working at the intersection of technology and human transformation, Version 1
• Postgraduate qualifications in Organisational Development and Transformation, Organisational Behaviour, Executive Coaching, and Business Psychology
• Chartered Fellow, CIPD
• EMCC Senior Practitioner and certified executive coach
• NLP Practitioner
• Master Practitioner in Workplace Resilience and Wellbeing
• Lead designer of a reimagined AI adoption change framework, Version 1
• Creator of Level 9 accredited future skills programmes
• Enterprise Ireland funded innovation in future skills
• Led Version 1's enterprise-wide AI adoption programme
• Keynote Speaker, Irish Hotels Federation Tech Summit, Learnovation (Trinity College Dublin), EMCC Ireland
• Guest Lecturer, Technological University Dublin
• 18+ years of global senior leadership in L&D and organisational development