Keynote speaker
What if your keynote became a turning point?
Are you looking for a speaker who does more than inspire? Someone who helps an audience truly pause and reflect on the challenge at hand and what it means for people and organisation?
Many conferences and events focus on inspiration, new ideas and energy for the future. That can be valuable. And yet people walk out of the room and nothing has truly been touched.
My keynotes are designed to inspire and to set something in motion around the theme for which your audience, stakeholders or employees have come together. To open thinking and feeling in such a way that those present begin to look with different eyes at the challenge ahead — and what that means for the choices and actions of everyday life. My keynote is for your organisation is a moment of attention that will set something lasting in motion. A curiosity-awakening opening to your programme. With lightness where possible and sharpness where needed.
When do you book me as a speaker
Organisations often invite me when a complex, significant challenge is at the heart of the conference or congress. Something is at play among all those involved that cannot be resolved directly, but that is occupying people’s minds. Think of moral questions around inclusion, polarisation or longer-term issues such as profit versus value, sustainable growth and what that requires.
Beyond the content, I am often asked to awaken the audience’s curiosity for what follows in the rest of the programme. A day with impact stands or falls by the way in which people open themselves to the unknown that is coming. Through surprising exercises and a playful yet precise approach, I bring participants quickly from a mindset of ‘visiting audience’ to ‘an engaged group of investigators’ of the central theme of the day.
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What you can expect
Every keynote begins with me listening to you as the client. To the context of your organisation, the theme of the gathering and the questions that live beneath the surface. Together we look for the question that truly calls for attention — even when it is not yet directly visible.
From there, I create a story and an experience through which something lasting is touched in the people in the room. Through a deeply personal narrative, I take people into an experience from their life or mine, woven around the theme of the event. In the interactive journey that follows, participants encounter the theme of the day on multiple levels — not just by talking about it, but by experiencing something together.
My appearance is not a general address, but an invitation to look at the central question in your own practice with fresh eyes. People practise giving more attention, curiosity and a different perspective to the theme at hand.
During the keynote, a moment of recognition or insight often arises. Sometimes small, sometimes unexpected — but precisely enough to set something in motion in everyday thinking or feeling.
What a keynote delivers
A keynote succeeds when something shifts in how people look at your conference theme, at themselves and at each other. When a subject that previously felt abstract comes closer and gains meaning in the daily practice of those present.
After an appearance, I hear almost without exception that something lasting has changed. A thought, a question or an image that people carry forward into their further work. People have been introduced to several principles from my philosophy of investigative living and leading — such as listening into being, asking forward, or bending reaction into response. The collective challenge at the centre becomes clearer, and the step each person can take suddenly feels within reach.
In this way, the opening of your gathering becomes more than an inspiring moment — it becomes an invitation to look further with greater attention. It becomes a starting point for the workshops, conversations and other activities on the programme that day. And for the steps that follow in everyone’s own practice.
Themes I often speak about
Every keynote emerges from the question alive in your organisation or among your stakeholders or audience, and the moment you find yourselves in. That is why my work never begins with a fixed subject, but with the challenge that calls for attention. In many organisations, the themes involve leadership in complex situations, collaboration and trust, culture change or navigating difference and tension. Questions around sustainability, social responsibility or the quality of decision-making also arise regularly. Sometimes it is about the art of listening, sometimes about asking questions that make movement possible, and sometimes about the courage to pause before taking the next step.
Whatever the theme, it always remains connected to the daily practice of people in your organisation and to the choices you are facing.
Practical
Duration: We align the duration with the purpose of the gathering and the moment at which you invite me. That may be a keynote at the opening of a conference, a deeper narrative during a programme, or an endnote that helps connect insights to practice.
Number of participants: I speak for large audiences and for small groups where personal contact is central. We choose the format carefully, so that it fits the people taking part.
Preparation: Every keynote is prepared in consultation. We take the time to understand the challenge, the purpose of the gathering and the context thoroughly, so that the contribution genuinely connects with what is at play.
Investment: Dependent on duration, preparation and customisation. For social organisations, we look together for a fitting form that does justice to the challenge and the available resources.
Ready for a keynote that gets things in motion?
Whether you are organising a conference, preparing a leadership day or wanting to open a gathering with impact — I would be glad to explore with you what is needed.
About Suzanne Leclaire
I am a cultural scientist, executive and guide for leaders and organisations working in complex circumstances. In my practice, I learned that movement rarely comes from giving more answers. It usually begins the moment someone dares to ask a different question and is willing to look with attention at what is truly at play.
Investigative living and leadership is my specialism. In my keynotes, I invite people to look with curiosity at their own theme and practice — beyond quick judgements and fixed convictions. Not to tell them what to do, but to create space for their own wisdom and movement.
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