Thursday Keynote Speaker

Nancy Giordano, Futurist and Strategist
From Leadership to Leadering: The Shift We Need for the Future We Want

Join Nancy Giordano, renowned strategic futurist and leadership provocateur, for an inspiring presentation designed to reshape how city leaders champion progress in a rapidly evolving world. In this thought-provoking talk, Nancy will explore the core principles of leadering—an approach that transitions away from traditional leadership to cultivate resilience, creativity, and collaborative innovation in times of disruption.

Nancy will invite you as a community leader to rethink your role, emphasize adaptive leadership, and create environments where visionary, inclusive stewardship can flourish. This session will offer actionable insights on building agile, forward-thinking teams, and strategies for leading with purpose in an interconnected world.

Whether you’re navigating complex municipal challenges, fostering community-driven growth, or driving sustainable change, this keynote will provide valuable tools and a fresh perspective to elevate and expand your approach in shaping the future of your city.

Described as endlessly optimistic, Nancy Giordano is a visionary strategist, gatherer and author. With a drive to help enterprise organizations and caring leaders transform to meet the escalating expectations ahead, she is recognized as one of the top female futurists.

The world’s first TEDx licensee, co-founder of the Femme Futurists Society podcast, best-selling author of LeaderING: The Ways Visionary Leaders Play Bigger, and mother of three, her expertise and experiences range from AI to frozen foods to reinventing the internet, and all of her projects have a key common denominator: transitioning away from the extractive operating systems and expired thinking of the industrial era to creating the more regenerative, inclusive and dynamic solutions the future demands.

Fascinated by the intersection of technology, business, society and our own expanding consciousness, she has designed and produced several immersive leadership conferences and strategic summits, champions several horizon distributed tech and emerging economic movements, and for the past nine years has been an advisor to two AI start-ups, including Kungfu.AI, a fast-growing AI services company.