You are indeed the biggest champion and understand what we are doing more than many others in the company. You live it and breath it. To now make the knowledge available to many others, and hopefully create the momentum for biggest change is a very noble cause. Thanks for doing that. Purpose is indeed closely linked to wellness and not many people see this yet. Again you are a pioneer here. You will enjoy the challenges and opportunities and you are well prepared for it. We will see each other still but already thanks for all you have done for this great institution. We will benefit from it for years to come.
Biography
Geoff McDonald is a globally recognised speaker and former Global VP of Human Resources at Unilever. His work sits at the intersection of mental health, individual resilience, and organisational performance, drawing on his lived experience of burnout and a career spent leading through change.
His new session, The Human Advantage in an Era of Infinite Disruption, brings this work into the age of AI: helping leaders protect their own capacity while building organisations that can adapt.
The pressure on leaders to do more, know more, and be more is relentless. As geopolitical, technological, and cultural change accelerates, Geoff challenges simplistic conversations about resilience that reduce it to a self-care checklist. He reframes resilience as a leadership responsibility. Leaders must understand what resilient people do, recognise what burnout is and how it differs from depression and anxiety, and model the boundaries and habits they ask others to adopt. Geoff’s personal story makes this candid, human, and grounded in lived experience rather than theory.
From there, he turns to organisational resilience. AI has changed the rules, but technology alone will not determine which organisations thrive. Geoff explores the myths surrounding AI and shifts the conversation from replacement to augmentation: how leaders can use new tools while strengthening judgement, connection, empathy, and trust. At the centre is psychological safety, which he presents as the foundation for innovation and honest conversations in uncertain conditions.
Geoff combines honest, experience-led storytelling with practical action. He distils the pillars of organisational resilience into clear steps leaders can apply with their teams, helping audiences distinguish constant activity from effective leadership and create healthier cultures where people can adapt and perform.
His message is both challenging and hopeful: the future will not belong to leaders who try to outpace machines, but to those who strengthen the human qualities technology cannot replicate. Audiences leave with greater clarity on how to care for themselves, create safety for others, and lead with humanity through whatever comes next.