Meet Our GSGLis22 Keynote Speakers

A keynote speaker is defined as someone who delivers a speech that sets the central theme of a conference. The word “keynote”, in fact, actually refers to the principal and underlying theme of a larger idea. For Global Scrum Gathering 2022 Lisbon + Beyond our theme is transformation: transforming yourself, transforming your organization and ultimately, transforming the world.

Each of our keynote speakers corresponds with one of those levels of transformation. On Monday morning, we’ll open the conference by hearing from Sahar Hashemi, an entrepreneur and best-selling author, that will explore how to unleash the culture of a startup in a big organization. On the second day, Ricardo Cabete, Emotional Intelligence Expert, will touch on how to transform yourself and bettering your emotionally intelligent communication. Finally on day three, we’ll explore transforming the world with panel discussion entitled “Agile and Our Planetary Challenges”.

Read more to learn about our incredible keynote speakers and panel for GSGLis22.

Sahar Hashemi, OBE, Entrepreneur and Best-Selling Author

Unleash the Magic of Startup Culture: Making Change From Where You Are

As founder of two disruptive businesses and the author of a bestselling book on entrepreneurship, Sahar understands entrepreneurial behaviour to the core. She also understands corporate behaviour to the core, evolving out of her early corporate law career, then seeing the transformation of culture when her start up grew into a big company, and this last decade speaking to over 400 large organizations. This combination of personal experience in both worlds gives her a unique and deep perspective into entrepreneurial behaviours, what blocks it in big organizations and what it takes to unleash it.

Biography

Lawyer-turned-entrepreneur, Sahar Hashemi has used her deep knowledge of both the corporate and startup worlds to become an internationally recognized thought leader on entrepreneurial mindset.

Sahar left her legal career in a top London law firm after five years to start Coffee Republic, the UK’s first US style coffee bar chain with her brother Bobby. In 5 years, they built it into one of the UK’s most recognised high street brands with 110 bars and a turnover of £30m. 

She left the day-to-day management of Coffee Republic and published a bestselling book about her journey, Anyone Can Do It, to demystify the idea that entrepreneurship is an innate personality trait, which has been translated into 6 languages and is the 2nd-highest selling book on entrepreneurship after Richard Branson.

Her latest book Start-Up Forever: How To Build A Start-Up Culture In A Big Company, released in March 2019, was named The Financial Times Best Business Book of the Month. Start Up Forever has been much acclaimed in the corporate world by throwing away the excuses which normally stifle entrepreneurial culture and providing a practical easy to implement  toolkit to unleash the agility and innovation of entrepreneurial thinking which all large companies need.

Sahar was nominated by Director magazine as one of its Top 10 Original Thinkers, alongside Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Jonathan Ive. She has been named “Pioneer to the life of the Nation'' by Her Majesty The Queen and Young Global leader by the World Economic Forum. She was listed in the Maseratti 100, a definitive list of Britain’s most successful philanthropists, investors, mentors and advisors. In June 2012 Sahar was awarded an OBE for services to the UK economy and to charity.

Sahar is currently working on her exciting new project “Buy Women Built” launched in March 2022 to boost economic recovery by bringing consumer support and recognition to female founded businesses. She sits on the board of the Scale Up Institute and on the advisory board of Digital Boost, Change Please Coffee and The Hundred Cricket.

Notable Testimonials:

“Sahar Hashemi has a gift for storytelling. These pages radiate the warmth and humour with which she has passionately spoken so many times about her own experiences as an entrepreneur and subsequent conversations with ‘big business’. There’s an oversupply of frameworks and tools at the disposal of the 21st century ‘intrapreneur’, but this common-sense canter through 10 habits and no less than 34 small but significant ‘shifts’ is a well-crafted wake-up call to the dormant entrepreneur in all of us. Inspiring, human, humble. Just like the author.”

- Carl Nagel | Global Marketing Innovation Director |Jacobs Dowe Egberts

"You truly galvanized people in the room into feeling they could and should make changes in their approach to work – which is precisely the outcome we wanted"

- SKY

Ricardo Cabete, Emotional Intelligence Expert

Emotionally Intelligent Communication: Communication Secrets that Create Empathy and High Performance

Better business means better communication. Leadership is all about creating emotions that lead to success. How do you create the right emotions in your teams? With Emotionally Intelligent Communication. Participants will experience, in a practical way, the power of motivation, influence, negotiation, feedback, body language and assertive communication. This Masterclass will be tailored to your organization’s needs and delivered with entertaining energy and practical content your audience can apply immediately.

Biography

Ricardo Cabete is an emotional intelligence expert, interactive keynote speaker and executive coach who works with global organizations like Novartis, PwC and HSBC, to increase employee engagement.

In a world of technology and artificial intelligence, Ricardo helps corporate leaders communicate with their teams in a way that spark emotional connection. The main outcome is higher employee engagement that boosts business results like staff retention, productivity and profitability.

He speaks at global corporate events and international conferences for several industries, including HR, Insurance and Banking. Ricardo loves to create Keynotes and Masterclasses that are impactful for the audience and at the same time create high ROI results for his clients.

His signature keynotes, The Master of Emotions and The Engagement Sherlock Holmes, are best-sellers around the world, driving the audience into an interactive, insightful and powerful experience.

In 2017 he was awarded as the European Champion of Public Speaking by Toastmasters International, placing in the top 30 speakers in the world in a contest with more than 30.000 speakers globally.

Ricardo speaks with Emotion and always has a surprise impact element in his talks that make them memorable.

Get ready to feel engaged!

Notable Testimonials:

"Ricardo is a very empathetic and engaging speaker! I was surprised by the depth and realness in his talk! He gave me practical tools to manage emotions in both personal and professional environments. It was a very motivating and enriching experience!"

Joana Côrte Real | Medical Affairs Director | Novartis

“Ricardo is seriously one of the best speakers I have heard in a long time. Why? Because he is refreshingly different and his content, style and messages, memorable. He is eloquent, creative and imaginative in how he delivers his strong and powerful messages around Emotional Intelligence and how being Emotionally Intelligent transforms employee engagement. If you want your staff to fly for you and reignite their appetite for work thus elevating their performance, definitely get in touch with Ricardo.”

Mary Tilson-Wharton | Head of Speaker Coaching | Speaking Business Academy

Wednesday Panel: Agile and Our Global Challenges 

Agile continues to have an undeniable impact transforming the world of work by equipping organizations to dance with complexity and change. It has moved beyond technology and product development to create greater outcomes everywhere in organizations and across industries. The question at this critical moment in time is: How can Agile positively impact today's global challenges? 

This is the question our panelists will help you explore as they share how they are applying agility to address planetary-level challenges such as climate change, poverty, responsible economic growth and more. As a global community, we are at the very beginning of this exploration and we are experimenting with others inside and outside the agile community to understand what role we Agilists might play – individually and as a community. We kicked off this conversation at Agile 2022, and we’re excited to continue it with you at the Global Scrum Gathering in Lisbon. We intend that these early events spark a worldwide conversation in every meetup, conference and corporate conversation. We eagerly invite you to be a part of that conversation! 

Moderator: Lyssa Adkins, Agility & Leadership Coach

Lyssa Adkins believes that Agile is a brilliant, emergent response to help us thrive in our ever-increasingly complex, changeable and interconnected world. Her current focus is coaching Leadership Teams to take up the Agile transformation that is theirs to do — on both a personal and group level. For many years she has been a passionate contributor to the discipline and profession of Agile Coaching and has trained many thousands of agilists in the knowledge, skills, and mindsets needed to coach teams and organizations to get full benefits of Agile. In 2010, she authored Coaching Agile Teams which is still a bestseller many years later and was released as an audiobook in its 10th year.

Panelist: Sabine Canditt, CST, CEC, CTC, ICF PCC, Systemic Business Coach

From software development to people development: having started as a trained electrical and software engineer, I am now coaching individuals, teams and organisations towards an agile, purposeful, joyful and sustainable (working) life.

Back in 2004, when I was working as a software developer and process improver, I was enlightened by my Certified Scrum Master training, given by Ken Schwaber. This was the way I wanted to work! I became one of the first German Certified Scrum Trainers in 2008 and a Certified Enterprise Coach in 2011. I have been the “Agile Mindsetter” as internal trainer and coach for Siemens and Allianz, working with many individuals and teams in business, IT, product development, and management. After almost 30 years, I left the world of big companies, worked independently (www.cansult.de) and now found my team at improuv GmbH. I am convinced that agile training and coaching can and must contribute to the solution of the severe problems of humanity, specifically climate change, and that we bear responsibility to make this happen.

Panelist: Steve Holyer, Agile Coach, Facilitator, and Trainer

Steve Holyer helps communities tackle urgent issues together. He uses Agile, including scrum, to serve non-profit organizations, NGOs, associations, commercial enterprises and teams on important missions. A leading agile coach, scrum professional, facilitator, mentor, speaker, and penguins' friend, he helps his clients create better outcomes in commercial and non-commercial sectors.

Steve knows that none of our improvements in agile software development will matter at all if we can't shift the course of climate change and meet the planet’s other wicked environmental, social, and economic issues right now. That’s the reason he connects Agile with Theory of Change for organisations promoting social change and environmental action.

Panelist: Ana Laura Juvino, Agile and Leadership Coach

Ana Laura is a Leadership and Agile Coach with more than 20 years working in different multicultural and international companies around the world. Passionate about designing and co-creating agile transformations using different innovative frameworks that assist people to stay with the unknown and allow the best future to emerge. She trusts that cultivating inner presence, having a higher purpose and building community can create the social fields that we need in our agile organizations to generate a sustainable impact in our society. 

Ana Laura has been working in different industries, including Supply Chain Management, Software, Logistics, Banks, Pharmaceutical, NGOs and others. She is a volunteer in different U-school Hubs and diversity and inclusion initiatives. Laura has her background in International Business and Management leadership. She has been a Theory U practitioner since 2016 applying its frameworks and tools in agile environments.  

Panelist: Kubair Shirazee, Enterprise Agile Coach

Kubair is an Enterprise Agile Coach, with 20+ years of experience facilitating people, teams, enterprises and communities be agile. Kubair works with leadership and teams in equal measure to facilitate leaders articulate and teams deliver the vision. Away from his day job, Kubair volunteers in the international development sector, coaching non-technical teams be Agile so that they design and deliver impactful products to secure livelihoods in marginalised communities. Kubair's work experience spans pharmaceuticals, healthcare, public sector, telecoms, not-for-profits, retail, digital agencies, nascent start-ups and urban informal settlements (slums).

Panelist: Joanne Stone, Enterprise Agile Coach and Founder of Wick’d Agility

Joanne is the founder of Wick’d Agility and the Agile Mentorship TO Program. Wick’d Agility is bringing wicked problems and agility together to serve our local communities by chipping away at planetary challenges. The Mentorship program, founded in 2017, serves a gap between new agilists and experienced agilists, bringing knowledge and connection to the Agile Community. The mentorship program has mentored over 500 mentees in Scrum, Agile, Kanban, Business Agility, team dynamics, leadership and coaching. Joanne loves building connections and communities.

Joanne has been in IT for 30 years, led teams of 200+ individuals and has been in the agile space for 11 years. She leads by example, embraces the unknown and vulnerability, brings out the best in others, and is continually seeking ways to improve. She is an entrepreneur, expert agile coach, certified professional coach, executive, trainer, and proud mother of 4 daughters and 2 dogs. Her expertise helped create teams, leaders, and organizations make a difference at work.