All Speakers
Following Your Passion for Success
Pro Football Hall of Famer, two-time Emmy winner, and Peabody Award-winning journalist Michael Strahan is a serial entrepreneur with an ever-expanding portfolio. In this inspiring conversation, Strahan shares stories from his legendary career and how overcoming self-doubt to follow your passion leads to achieving great things in any field. His perspective on leadership, teamwork, and achieving peak performance under pressure is set to inspire AFP 2025 attendees to pursue excellence in both their personal and professional ambitions.
Empowering Organizations and Leaders in Uncertain Times
Author, and globally recognized expert on disruptive change, Scott Anthony, guides FP&A professionals through the complexities of managing their organizations during periods of uncertainty and volatility. Attendees learn how to transform “either/or” choices into “both/and” possibilities, leveraging innovative strategies to turn ambiguity into opportunity. Anthony introduces new tools such as strategic sparring sessions and walk the line to enhance alignment and impact. He also shares insights on building adaptive capacity, empowering leaders to accelerate progress and navigate through the fog of uncertainty. This keynote promises to leave attendees with valuable mindsets, mental models, and approaches for thriving in chaotic environments.
AI and the Future of Us: Navigating the Promise and Perils of Artificial Intelligence
Few technological developments in the past century have fueled as much curiosity, fear and misinformation. In this dynamic, jargon-free keynote, Theresa Payton, cybersecurity expert and former White House CIO, unpacks AI's transformative potential while exposing its looming risks. With anonymized stories from law enforcement's front lines and stunning live demonstrations that reveal the tradecraft of today’s cybercriminals, Theresa will equip you with practical actions to harness AI's vast potential while protecting yourself, your clients and your organization.
Can I Have Your Attention? Leading in the Age of Distraction
In today's hyper connected workplace, distraction has become more than a productivity issue—it's a strategic liability that prevents teams from focusing on what matters most. Learn how to reclaim attention as a leadership priority with bestselling author Curt Steinhorst, who combines personal experience overcoming ADHD with a decade researching the economics of attention in modern organizations. You'll discover practical approaches to help your team focus without micromanaging, build rhythms that protect attention across roles, and use clarity as a force multiplier for execution. The result? Teams that can break free from constant interruption and zero in on work that creates real value—transforming attention from your scarcest resource into your strongest competitive advantage.
Bert Jacobs co-founded Life is Good with his brother, John Jacobs, to inspire people to focus and celebrate the good around them. What began as a small venture selling T-shirts out of a van evolved into a nationally recognized brand and a vibrant community grounded in the power of optimism. Along the way, they discovered that optimism is a strategic advantage that empowers leaders and teams to stay resilient while navigating change, uncertainty, and complex challenges. In this inspiring keynote, Jacobs shares the inspiring journey of building Life is Good and highlights how embracing optimism can foster personal and professional growth. Attendees will walk away with actionable strategies and a renewed perspective, and the tools to cultivate optimism in their teams, leadership, and daily work—empowering them to grow the good in business and beyond.
Outlook for the U.S. Economy in 2024 & Beyond
As the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve is responsible for monetary policy and supervising financial institutions. In the face of changing macroeconomic factors and key indicators such as unemployment, inflation, GDP performance, the housing market, and interest rates, the Federal Reserve sets policy that treasury and finance leaders must plan for and ultimately react to. Executive Vice President and Chief Economic Adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, David Altig, shares his insights into current economic conditions, how key macroeconomic indicators are analyzed, and discusses the tools used to drive policy forward. Altig also provides a national economic forecast while discussing the key performance indicators to keep an eye on in the coming months. This keynote addresses how key indicators shape the Federal Reserve’s economic policies and the macroeconomic factors that treasury and finance leaders need to monitor.
The Serious Business of Humor, Humanity & Resilience
There is a misconception in today’s corporate world: that treasury and finance professionals must suppress their sense of humor in the work environment to be taken seriously. On the contrary, research tells a different story. Building on her bestselling book, Humor, Seriously, Jennifer Aaker delves into the behavioral science of humor, and why it fuels creativity, fosters resilience, and strengthens teams and organizations. Aaker shares stories from inspiring leaders and tactics that can be deployed to bridge the trust gap, cultivate cultures of levity, unlock agility in the face of change; including concrete tools for embracing humor with a purpose in your personal and professional life.
Why the Merchant’s Voice is Critical in Payments Innovation
The Business to Consumer landscape has seen a rapid shift in payment transactions from the use of checks and magnetic strip cards, with most taking place at a physical location, to technology-enabled, faster payments, same day ACH, cryptocurrency, tap transactions, digital wallets and PayFacs, to name a few. In the face of these developments, it’s critical for merchants to also have a voice in the development of this evolving payment ecosystem. CEO of the Merchant Advisory Group, John Drechny discusses the current payment landscape and how merchant collaboration is leading to better outcomes.
The world's largest database of major projects reveals that a shockingly small percentage of projects are completed on budget, on time, and with the outcome envisioned. That means the most important elements of the business case are far off base. Worse, projects aren’t merely at risk of being a little off - catastrophic failure is frighteningly common, and the story is the same around the world for projects of all sizes. In this talk, Dan Gardner draws on his book How Big Things Get Done to look at why failure is so common and what successful project leaders can teach us about conceiving, planning, and delivering on our own projects, big and small.
Charisma and Leadership: The Science of Trust, Influence and Rapport
You only get one chance to make the right first impression. Within a few seconds, people judge your level of intelligence and trustworthiness. For the first time, science and technology have taken charisma apart, figured it out and turned it into an applied science: In controlled laboratory experiments, researchers could raise or lower people's level of charisma as if they were turning a dial. This talk covers the science of charisma; the keys to making fantastic first impressions, and the secrets to having that "Wow effect", that "boardroom presence" to quickly establish credibility, trust, and rapport.
Reimagination in a Time of Change
The circumstances of the last 3 years accelerated many previously developing trends at an exponential pace (e.g., distributed and hybridized work; increased use of AI, etc.). It also magnified existing issues such as the limits of short-term thinking, changes in trade, evolving technology and the impact of various supply chain disruptions. It is imperative that treasury and finance professionals successfully analyze such anticipated changes to better invest in capabilities that won't be out of date by the time they are in-place. In the face of an ever-evolving technological landscape, Erica Orange shares strategies for challenging core thinking to better identify and translate trends into actionable strategies, while creating new future-proofed opportunities for your organization.
Managing Human Capital Risk from a Generational Perspective
With multiple generations represented in the workplace, HCR management is more complex, requiring integrated strategies to address generational diversity. It is critical that treasury and finance leaders tap into the values and expectations of multiple generations to improve engagement, performance, productivity and develop talent to assume greater leadership responsibilities. This keynote explores how generational identities translate into behaviors as they relate to three organizational factors – relationship to the organization, relationship with authority and work styles, while providing effective strategies for leading generational diverse teams.
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In Conversation with John Cena: Be A Work in Progress
John Cena attributes his success to remaining completely authentic and his never give up attitude, but his path to becoming who he is today was far from easy. From being bullied as a kid to having to sleep in his car, Cena never let his challenges define him. Achieving blockbuster success across multiple industries, Cena shares inspiring stories from his unique journey and how authenticity, positivity, hope and the drive to continually challenge himself has shaped his career.
John will be available for photos in the exhibit hall for a limited time after his keynote!
In his latest book, New York Times bestselling author, Malcolm Gladwell, revisits the phenomenon of social epidemics and examines the ways in which we have learned to tinker with and shape the spread of ideas and trends—sometimes with great success, sometimes with disastrous consequences.
Today’s epidemics are turbocharged versions of their earlier counterparts, and we are more tempted than ever to try to manipulate tipping points for our own ends. Treasury and finance professionals need to apply the concept of the tipping point – how small changes can make a big impact - to influence their organization’s success or even the world for the better. In this thought-provoking keynote, Gladwell shares the insights needed to meet these challenges head-on in innovative ways.