Nola Simon
Futurist • Nola Simon Advisory
Canada •
More than $10,000
About
Most keynote speakers tell your audience what’s changing. I help them see what they’re taking for granted before the change becomes expensive. I work at the pre-decision stage — the window before assumptions harden into strategy, before direction calcifies into policy no one formally approved. That’s where the Assumption-Ground Audit lives. It’s forensic work done while there’s still room to ask the question that changes everything. 17 years inside Manulife and John Hancock — billion-dollar vendor relationships, national innovation work, cross-border Canada-US operations — means I know what institutional thinking looks like from the inside. I’m not an outsider critiquing organizations. I’m someone who watched assumptions build futures from a front-row seat, and left to help others see it before it’s too late to matter. Your audience won’t just hear something interesting. They’ll leave seeing differently.
Speaking Topics
Signature Programs (2)
Trust isn’t built through initiatives. It’s caught — in the moments leaders don’t know they’re being watched. This keynote examines how trust actually forms in organizations: what employees notice, what they remember, and what they repeat. In person it’s noticed. Digitally it’s amplified. Through AI it’s perpetuated at scale. Leaders who understand Witnessed Trust stop managing perception and start making decisions worth trusting.
Key Takeaways
- 1. Why trust is caught, not built — and what that means for how leaders show up 2. How digital and AI environments amplify trust signals your organization isn’t deliberately sending 3. What to stop doing immediately and what to do instead
Audience
C-suite, senior leaders, HR and people executives
Format
Duration
45-60
Delivery
Every organization is standing on assumptions it hasn’t examined. Some of those assumptions are load-bearing — and nobody knows which ones. This keynote uses the Assumption-Ground Audit to help senior leaders identify what they’re taking for granted before it becomes expensive to find out. Not change management. Not adoption. The work that happens upstream of both.
Audience
-suite and senior strategy leaders
Format
Duration
45-60
Delivery
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