Keynote Address: Jennifer Garvey-Berger

Jennifer has been researching, writing and working with leaders in complex settings for 20 years. Her first real job was as a middle school English teacher, but her core interest became supporting adults rather than adolescents, first at a university (as associate professor at George Mason University) and then as a consultant, researcher, and writer (like at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research). Starting with a doctorate in ways adults make sense of complexity (Harvard University, 2002) and building through three books (and soon a fourth), Jennifer has developed a series of tools and approaches that help leaders around the globe use complexity to their advantage. In her work as founder and CEO at Cultivating Leadership, Jennifer has coached high school leadership teams in Wellington New Zealand and senior leaders at large global organisations. The thing all these leaders have in common is their need to increase their ability to thrive under conditions of growing complexity, uncertainty, and change.  Jennifer now mostly works with executives and executive teams in private, non-profit, and government sectors around the world, like Google, Novartis, Wikipedia, and Oxfam International. Jennifer also speaks about leadership in complexity at conferences, guest lectures at universities around the world, and advises learning and development leaders about designing workplaces for complexity. Now that her two fabulous children are grown, Jennifer has started a new chapter by buying an old estate in the French countryside with her husband and eight friends who live and work in community.