Are you looking for a high profile international speaker to add to your next event? Use this list as a resource to keep up to date on the thought leaders and story tellers visiting Australia throughout the year and take advantage of reduced travel rates.
If you'd like the opportunity to have any of these heavyweights present at your next event contact our expert team for more information and someone will get back to you within 24 hours to discuss your event.
Andre Agassi: Former World No. 1 Tennis Champion
Location and Dates: 6 August 2026
Availability: Fireside Chat, Private Event Appearance, Q&A Session
About Andre:
Eight Grand Slam titles and an Olympic gold medal placed Andre Agassi among the most decorated players in tennis history, but it is his honesty about the cost of that success that now resonates most with audiences. Since retiring in 2006, he has built the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education into one of the most significant philanthropic forces in American public schooling, raising more than $185 million and reshaping outcomes for thousands of students in Las Vegas. His bestselling autobiography, Open, gave an unflinching account of ambition, pressure and reinvention that still shapes how organisations think about performance. Agassi is in Melbourne for one evening only and open to a select engagement during that window.
Dr Richard Hames: Strategic Futurist, Author and Geopolitical Adviser
Location and Dates: Australia, mid-August 2026. Available for select engagements during this window.
Availability: Keynote Presentation, Executive Briefing, Fireside Chat, Panel
About Richard:
One of the more credible voices in global foresight. Dr Richard Hames works at the intersection of geopolitics, technology, and leadership strategy, with current advisory work spanning education, finance, banking, cybersecurity, and advanced technologies, and particular depth in China-related advisory. His methodology for future-proofing organisations and his latest book Teaching Silicon How to Feel give him a distinctive edge in discussions on AI and long-range strategy. In Australia in mid-August 2026, he is available for engagements that require genuine analytical depth on where the world is heading.
Melissa Crawford: Futurist, Technologist & Human Behaviour Strategist
Location and Dates: Australia, September 2026. Available for local engagements throughout the month.
Availability: Keynote Presentation, Fireside Chat, Executive Briefing, Workshop
About Melissa:
A certified futurist with two technology degrees and a master's in psychology underway, Melissa Crawford works at a specific intersection that most foresight practitioners leave unexplored: the human response to technological change. Her presentations move beyond trend analysis to the psychological and strategic implications that organisations consistently underestimate. The cross-disciplinary background gives her earned credibility on terrain most futurists only visit from the outside. In Australia in September 2026, available for local engagements.
Marc Randolph: Co-Founder and First CEO of Netflix
Location and Dates: Australia, 7-29 September 2026. Available for select engagements throughout this window.
Availability: Keynote Presentation, Fireside Chat, Executive Briefing, Q&A Session
About Marc:
Few entrepreneurs can say they built a company that changed how the world watches television, then wrote the definitive account of how it happened. Marc co-founded Netflix and served as its first CEO, steering the company through the uncertain years before streaming became inevitable. He has since founded or co-founded six more startups and become one of Silicon Valley's most sought-after mentors to early-stage founders. His September visit to Australia gives local organisations a limited window to bring his story of building something from nothing directly to their stage.
Professor Tim Soutphommasane: Chief Diversity Officer, University of Oxford
Location and Dates: Sydney, 7-11 September 2026. Available for engagements across Australia.
Availability: Keynote Presentation, Fireside Chat, Executive Briefing, Panel (Moderator or Participant), Conference Opening or Close
About Tim:
One of the most credible voices on organisational culture and human rights working anywhere in the world today, Tim currently leads equality, diversity and inclusion strategy across the University of Oxford. He was Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner from 2013 to 2018 and has spent his career translating complex questions about identity, race, and culture into frameworks that organisations can act on. His landmark Leading for Change reports reshaped how Australian institutions approach cultural diversity in senior leadership. In conversation or on stage, Tim brings intellectual depth and practical application in equal measure.
Lydia Lassila: Five-Time Winter Olympian and Olympic Gold Medallist
Location and Dates: Australia, May to November 2026. Available for select engagements across this period.
Availability: Keynote Presentation, Fireside Chat, Panel
About Lydia:
Five-time Winter Olympian, Olympic Gold and Bronze medallist, and the first woman in history to land a quad-twisting triple somersault in competition. Lydia Lassila knows what it takes to perform under pressure when the margin for error is zero, and she has built a Keynote around the frameworks that actually made it possible: deliberate preparation, fear management, recovery from injury, and the discipline to compete again when everything in you says not to. In Australia from May through November 2026, with genuine flexibility for engagements across that window.
Scotty James: Four-Time Olympian and Triple Snowboard World Champion
Location and Dates: Australia, Winter 2026. Available for select engagements during this period.
Availability: Keynote Presentation, Fireside Chat, Panel, Private Event Appearance
About Scotty:
Three World Halfpipe Championship titles, four Olympic Games, nine X Games medals, and a career that has redefined what is technically possible in snowboard halfpipe. Scotty James is the most decorated Australian snowboarder in the sport's history, with an Olympic bronze and silver, and a competitive record built on technical precision and consistency under pressure. Off the snow, he is an entrepreneur and strategic adviser to the X Games, applying the competitive discipline of elite sport to questions of performance, innovation, and audience. Available for local engagements across Winter 2026.
Mark Adams: Co-founder of VICE, AI Strategist and Innovation Adviser
Location and Dates: Australia, early September 2026. Available for select local engagements.
Availability: Keynote Presentation, Fireside Chat, Executive Briefing, Panel
About Mark:
Co-founder of VICE, adviser to cultural figures including Barack Obama and Taylor Swift, and a story-first presenter who has been named Speaker of the Year across more than 500 events worldwide. Mark Adams works at the intersection of innovation, AI, and creative strategy, with five co-founded companies and campaigns with 100-plus major awards behind him. He brings a commercially grounded perspective to technology and creativity that goes well beyond trend briefings. In Australia in early September 2026, available for select local engagements.
Chris Lemons: Saturation Diver and Last Breath Survivor
Location and Dates: Sydney and Brisbane, 3-13 September 2026.
Availability: Keynote Presentation, Fireside Chat, Executive Briefing, Q&A Session
About Chris:
Few speakers have contemplated their own death with the composure Chris Lemons brings to a stage. In September 2012, a catastrophic system failure in the North Sea severed his breathing line 300 feet below the surface, leaving him in darkness with five minutes of emergency gas and a forty minute wait for rescue. His survival became the subject of the Netflix and BBC documentary Last Breath, and inspired the 2025 feature film of the same name starring Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu and Finn Cole. Touring Australia this September, Chris shares what the experience revealed about calm under pressure, and how the training and teamwork of his crew turned an impossible situation into a survival story.
Shane Michael Hatton- Leadership, Communication and Culture Expert
Location and Dates: Australia, September and October 2026. Available for local engagements across both months.
Availability: Keynote Presentation, Workshop, Fireside Chat, Executive Briefing
About Shane:
A two-time author and Gallup-certified coach whose work spans Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and The Australian, Shane Michael Hatton has spent a decade building a practice at the intersection of leadership, psychology, and team culture. His approach is grounded in both commercial experience and behavioural science, and his focus on how people communicate, connect, and collaborate makes him a practical, evidence-based choice for organisations investing seriously in their leadership pipeline. In Australia across September and October 2026, available for local engagements.
Richard Gerver: Educator, Reformer & Expert on Human Potential
Location and Dates: October 2026. Available for local engagements across these windows.
Availability: Keynote Presentation, Fireside Chat, Panel, Workshop
About Richard:
The turnaround of a failing school in under two years earned Richard Gerver a reputation that governments and global corporations have been drawing on ever since. An adviser to Google, Microsoft, and multiple national governments, his work sits at the intersection of curiosity, learning, and human potential, and his ability to connect ideas across very different environments consistently expands how audiences understand their own capacity for change. His delivery combines intellectual substance with genuine warmth. In Australia across May, June, and October 2026, available for local engagements.
Dr Ayanna Howard: Robotics Pioneer, NASA Alumna and AI Innovator
Location and Dates: Australia, November 2026. Available for select engagements during this window.
Availability: Keynote Presentation, Fireside Chat, Executive Briefing
About Ayanna:
A robotics pioneer who began her career as a team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dr Ayanna Howard has spent three decades at the frontier of artificial intelligence and human-robot interaction. She is the co-founder of Zyrobotics, a company designing AI-driven STEM education and therapy tools for children with disabilities, which places her at a specific intersection of deep technical expertise and real-world social impact. For audiences grappling with where AI and robotics are genuinely heading, she brings the kind of grounded authority that is hard to replicate. In Australia in November 2026.
Chris Barton - Founder of Shazam, Inventor and Tech Investor
Location and Dates: Australia, November 2026. Available for select engagements during this window.
Availability: Keynote Presentation, Fireside Chat
About Chris:
He didn't just build a successful app. He built something that didn't exist, was told it couldn't exist, and watched it become a verb used by 300 million people a month. On stage, Chris Barton is specific where others are vague: speaking from the exact moments where the idea nearly died, and the solution emerged from somewhere unexpected. His Keynotes don't traffic in inspiration. They shift how audiences think about what is actually possible, and what innovation looks like when it's happening in real time. In Australia in November 2026.
