Opening Keynote
Daniel Coyle
The Culture Code: The New Science of Successful Groups
Daniel Coyle explores how organizations including Pixar, Navy SEALs Team Six, IDEO, and the San Antonio Spurs build cohesive teams. Drawing on The Culture Code, he examines the everyday signals that create belonging and the practical behaviors that strengthen trust and collaboration.
About Daniel
Daniel Coyle is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author whose books on leadership and performance include The Culture Code, The Culture Playbook, and Flourish.
His work explores how people learn and how successful groups build trust, commitment, and a strong culture. His research has taken him inside organizations including Pixar, the San Antonio Spurs, and Navy SEALs Team Six.
Coyle has advised professional sports teams, military special forces, schools, and other organizations, and has worked as a consulting producer for ESPN documentary films. His writing has appeared in Sports Illustrated and The New York Times Magazine.
Mid-Conference Keynote
Alison Wood Brooks
Better Conversations, Better Outcomes: The Science Behind the Interactions That Shape Our Lives
About Alison
Alison Wood Brooks is a behavioral scientist and professor at Harvard Business School, where she is the O’Brien Associate Professor of Business Administration and a Hellman Faculty Fellow. Her research focuses on the science of conversation: how people communicate, build trust, navigate difficult interactions, collaborate, negotiate, and form stronger relationships.
She is the author of TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, published in 2025. Her Harvard course, “TALK: How to Talk Gooder in Business and Life,” is one of HBS’s most popular electives and has a waitlist. She has been named one of Poets&Quants’ Best 40-Under-40 Business School Professors and received Harvard’s Wyss Award for Excellence in Mentoring.
She earned her Ph.D. in Decision Processes from Wharton and her undergraduate degree in Psychology and Finance from Princeton. Her research has appeared in major academic journals and outlets including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and she has been featured on Hidden Brain, Armchair Expert, and other podcasts.
She also teaches the MasterClass The Conversation Advantage, drawing on more than 15 years of research into how to handle conversations more effectively.