Speakers

Rory Gardiner
TED Speaker, Award-winning comedian & CCMA nominated country artist

Unshakable Resilience
Rory Gardiner is a leading voice on creativity and resilience, helping organizations turn pressure into performance and challenges into growth. With his signature blend of humor and practical strategy, Rory equips teams to beat burnout, embrace change, and reframe their work in ways that drive retention and engagement.

A former corporate software consultant turned award-winning comedian and musician, Rory bridges the gap between hard-earned professional experience and laugh-out-loud storytelling. His unique approach makes complex ideas simple, relatable, and unforgettable, perfect for conferences, corporate gatherings, and mental health awareness events.

Dorice Horenstein
2-hour interactive workshop session with VIP book signing afterwards

Champion Leadership: The 3 Mindset Shifts to Become The Leader Everyone Wants to Follow
When disconnection rises, leadership suffers. In this empowering session, Joy Champion Catalyst Dorice Horenstein equips professionals with three transformative mindset shifts — Own You, Know Them, and Ignite and Inspire — to build trust, reduce burnout, and lead with clarity and confidence. Grounded in her AMEN to CORE framework, this talk delivers tools to lead with strength, connection, and resilience—no matter the storm.

Skyler Tibbits
Founder and Director, MIT Self-Assembly Lab | Associate Professor of Design Research, MIT

Designing Smarter With Less: A New Approach to Sustainability and Innovation
When we think of smarter environments—smarter buildings, smarter cars, smarter clothing—we generally think about adding more: more power, more cost, more complexity, and ultimately more failure, says Skylar Tibbits. Instead, we should be asking ourselves: How can we build smarter with less? As founder and co-director of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, Skylar has spent over a decade designing systems made from simple materials that transform themselves and adapt to their environment. Along with his collaborators, he’s created structures that respond to temperature and sunlight, textiles that adapt to body temperature, and furniture that assembles itself. Now, he’s showing you how designing for adaptation and resilience can boost innovation, climate justice, machine intelligence, and much more.