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Meet NICK JANKEL

virtuoso motivational & inspirational keynote speaker & FUTURIST

EXPERIENCED & EXPERT FUTURIST on the future of leadership, business, work, healthcare

world authority on Leading, embracing & UNLEASHING Change, Innovation & Transformation

"FORGE THE FUTURE.
Don't fail it."

Nick is a sought-after, highly experienced, and powerful keynote speaker at the very top of his game. With almost 30 years of experience on the frontlines of disruption, he is a world authority on leading, embracing, and unleashing meaningful change, innovation, and transformation to adapt to the increasingly volatile, uncertain, and complex world. A seasoned professional futurist, he explores how to shape the Future of Work, Leadership, Business, and Healthcare. 

Nick delivers electrifying, energizing, and hyper-engaging “Wow!” keynotes for informed and discerning companies, conferences, institutions, associations, and nations. Think Nike, LEGO, Unilever, HP, Neom, Pfizer, Google, and No.10 Downing Street.

 

His surprisingly unique keynotes—exquisitely customized to fit your brief and packed with original science-backed ideas, actionable Ah-HA! insights, and real-world examples—captivate hearts, dazzle even the smartest minds, and ignite concrete change. Nick’s talks can include takeaway tools and practical hacks that turn inspiration into action.

A Cambridge-educated medical scientist and philosopher (Triple 1st/summa cum laude), Nick has spent three decades cracking the code of change (whether in the form of innovation, transformation, or leadership) while serving the growth of ambitious organizations like Virgin, PlayStation, and Novartis and walking the talk as a 10x purpose-driven entrepreneur. 

A polymath who has relentlessly explored what makes people tick from every angle possible, Nick is markedly different from other speakers. His thinking and tools have been utilized to coach and train over 100,000 leaders in Fortune 500s, and he has designed and led 100+ breakthrough innovation programs for multinationals. He is a seasoned professional futurist with over 50 foresight projects under his belt, and he has founded 10 pathfinding and pioneering start-ups in the fields of change, leadership, empowerment, and transformation.

Few speakers in the world have the depth and breadth of experience Nick has, both as a keynote speaker since the age of 15 and as a transformation catalyst who has worked with so many people—in such a wide variety of organizations and cultures—to empower them to do the most challenging things in life, leadership, and enterprise: to change, innovate, transform, and forge the future.

Nick is profoundly passionate about sharing the fruits of a lifetime’s research, expertise, and coal-face experience to help audiences of all kinds embrace change as an opportunity for growth, lead the change they want to see, unlock breakthroughs in any area, sustain performance without losing their humanity, and blast through the barriers that predictably block innovation and transformation.

He works hard—as a deep thinker yet warm-hearted speaker—to simplify complexity, reduce the paralysis of uncertainty, and take the pain out of change and transformation. He leaves audiences not just motivated, inspired, informed, and energized but tangibly moved to do things differently and empowered with practical tools to start the change today. With a restless commitment to generating an unprecedented ROI from speaking, he constantly innovates new speaking formats, such as experiential keynotes (90-120 mins) and interactive keynotes with a workshop session.

Whether headlining a major conference, inspiring a customer/user event, or galvanizing a top 10-500 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. His thought-leading ideas and talks are routinely called "visionary and far-reaching," "important and consequential," yet "profoundly practical and immediately useful.”

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 major 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, thus, effective leadership, teamwork, innovation, and culture change programs on the planet. Over 25 years, SOL has invented game-changing ways to unlock truly transformational leadership, breakthrough innovations, and exceptional teamwork.

 

Nick draws upon his company’s comprehensive leadership curriculum, advanced innovation methodology, and transformative tools and practices to meet keynote briefs. As a result of this vast library of cutting-edge IP, he can deliver keynotes on topics like purpose, coping with uncertainty, transformational leadership, innovation, changing mindsets, and storytelling with rigor, power, and credibility.

 

Nick has coached, advised, and empowered 100,000+ Fortune 500 leaders, start-ups/scale-up founders, local/national political leaders, policymakers, and changemakers. He has led 100+ disruptive 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 10x purpose-led enterprises, Nick has written a number of successful books, lectured at Yale, UC Berkeley, and Oxford, appeared in The Times and The Economist, written a column in the FT, been invited to speak as a thought leader at 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.

 

Since studying medical science, Nick has been dedicated to cracking the code of human and organizational change. As a result, he has developed an original and robust theory—Bio-Transformation® or BTX®—for driving individual, organizational, and systemic change as fast as humanly possible by working with, not against, human biology and culture.

 

As a trained scientist and philosopher of science, 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 thinking and tools can be relied upon to transform outdated yet change-resistant behaviors and mindsets.


Nick is a groundbreaking theorist and master practitioner of transformational/ conscious/ creative leadership and breakthrough/ disruptive/ transformative innovation, the two most powerful technologies for ensuring organizations adapt to relentless change, survive ruthless disruption. and deliver exponential value-creation.


In a twenty-five-year speaking career, Nick has become a genuinely virtuoso speaker, crafting a unique fusion of exhilarating ideas, empowering tips, and an enlivening stage presence. 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 keynotes and interactive keynotes with workshop elements.

 

Nick takes the science, art, and craft of keynote speaking profoundly seriously and sees keynotes as an under-appreciated and underutilized tool for driving concrete change in organizations and across networks/ associations/ systems.  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 relishes the unique challenges of top 20-500 senior leader and executive events and customer sales events and user conferences.

Nick has featured in

Crowd at keynote presentation

some of Nick's UNIQUE 
ACCOMPLISHMENTS

100K+

SENIOR Leaders COACHED & DEVELOPED

150+

takeaway leadership & INNOVATION tools created 

100+

FORTUNE 500 Innovation Programs LED

10+

Purpose-Driven Enterprises Founded & GROWN

5

THOUGHT LEADING
neuro-science driven BOOKS WRITTEN

4

modules of advanced leadership curriculum BUILT

3

presidents & prime ministers advised

2

degrees in medical science & philosophy of science (triple 1st / summa cum laude, cambrIdge)

1

original science-backed theory of change: bio-TRANSFORMATION®

CHECK NICK'S
AVAILABILITY

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