Nick Jankel 

Nick, a Cambridge-educated medical scientist and philosopher (Triple 1st/summa cum laude), has spent 30 years cracking the code of unlocking and unleashing transformation and innovation. With 28 years of experience serving the growth of ambitious organizations like Nike, Unilever, Intel, Virgin, PlayStation, and Novartis—and 25 years walking the talk as a high-impact, purpose-led entrepreneur on the frontlines of disruption—Nick is a lodestar of vision, velocity, values-driven business, and exponential value-creation for those navigating change, complexity, and uncertainty.

 

Nick is a groundbreaking theorist and master practitioner of transformational leadership and transformative (i.e., breakthrough) innovation, the two most powerful technologies for ensuring organizations can cope with relentless change, survive ruthless disruption, and deliver exponential value creation.

 

A highly experienced and sought-after professional mainstage/ headliner speaker at the very top of his game, Nick is booked by companies, conferences, institutions, associations, and nations—think Nike, LEGO, Unilever, Abu Dhabi, Pfizer, Google, No.10—who seek an unprecedented ROI from electrifying, exquisitely-customized, and science-backed keynotes that expand minds, captivate hearts & ignite change.

 

Nick’s keynotes help people thrive in change/complexity, unlock digital transformation/innovation, and become truly transformational as leaders and team members. He has cutting-edge talks on what is probable, possible, problematic, and provocative in the Future of Work, Health, Tech, Leadership, and Regenerative Business. Nick’s ideas are routinely called inspiring, powerful, rigorous, and bold.

 

Nick reliably delivers wow-inspiring talks at the intersection of technology, transformation, and innovation. He is out to share the reliably life-changing and often world-changing ideas, mindsets, habits, and daily practices needed to lead brilliantly through change, unlock constant breakthroughs in business models and teamwork, and blast through the barriers that predictably block innovation and transformation. He aims to simplify complexity, reduce the fear of uncertainty, and take the pain out of transformation.

 

Whether headlining at a conference or a top 100/300/500 leadership event, Nick seeks to touch the hearts and minds of all attendees and inspire them to rethink, reimagine, and rejuvenate so they rise to their challenges with more creativity, clarity, and courage than ever. As a leadership futurist, Nick helps audiences not just envision an exciting future but also shift how they think and act to cause the future they want.

 

In a speaking career spanning twenty-five years, Nick has become a virtuoso speaker, crafting a unique fusion of exhilarating ideas, empowering tips, and an enlivening stage presence. He has delivered for organizations as diverse as Pfizer, LEGO, Tesco, Kellogg’s, AstraZeneca, NHS, Schroder’s, WWF, Aspen Ideas Festival, Talks@Google, and CHRO Summit, showcasing his ability to cater to the unique needs of different industries and event types.

 

Nick takes the science, art, and craft of keynote speaking profoundly seriously. He sees keynotes as an underappreciated and underutilized tool for driving concrete change. He goes way beyond information, education, and motivation to inspire, accelerate, and transform. In addition to dazzling 45-minute keynotes, Nick has pushed keynote speaking to the limits to deliver unprecedented ROI for clients through experiential, interactive, and results-oriented formats. 

 

As a trained scientist with a Triple First (summa cum laude) in medical science and philosophy of science from Cambridge University, Nick uses the latest neuroscience to inspire even the most critical thinkers and win over even the most demanding audiences (e.g., engineers, educators, clinicians, technologists, lawyers, and financiers). His ideas and tools can reliably transform outdated yet change-resistant behaviors and mindsets.

 

Nick is the co-founder and CEO of global leadership consultancy Switch On Leadership (SOL). Operating worldwide, out of LDN and LAX, SOL works with great corporations (e.g., Unilever, Walgreens, Intel, HSBC, Syngenta, Kellanova, Smucker’s, AbbVie, Genentech), government agencies (e.g., Cabinet Office, NHS), and non-profits (e.g. GBC, WWF, Rockefeller Foundation, Oxfam).

 

With his team at SOL, Nick strives to craft the most transformative and so effective leadership, teamwork, innovation, and culture programs on the planet. Over 25 years, SOL has invented game-changing ways to unlock truly transformational leadership, breakthrough innovations, and exceptional teamwork.

 

Nick has spent 30 years cracking the transformation code. As a result, he has developed an original theory and robust methodology—Bio-Transformtion® or BTX®—for driving individual, organizational, and systemic change as fast as humanly possible. Nick draws upon his company’s comprehensive leadership curriculum, advanced innovation methodology, and transformative tools and practices to meet keynote briefs, covering topics like purpose, transformational leadership, innovation and transformation mindsets, storytelling, and ethical influencing with greater depth and more power than is conventional in a keynote speech.

 

Nick has coached, advised, and empowered 100,000+ Fortune 500 leaders, start-ups/scale-ups founders, local/national political leaders, policymakers, and changemakers. He has led 100+ purpose-led innovation programs, incl. catalyzing the most successful TV show of all time. He has contributed to billions of dollars of inclusive growth and outsized value creation.

 

A serial entrepreneur of multiple purpose-led enterprises, Nick has written six books, lectured at Yale, UC Berkeley, and Oxford, appeared in The Times and The Economist, written a column in the FT, been invited to Talks@Google and Aspen Ideas Festival, and starred as a transformation coach and TV host on two hit global TV shows (BBC, MTV). He wrote and exec produced a TV show green-lit for US network television on transforming businesses.