Stephanie Tranquille

What Scaling a Global Program Taught Me About Leading Change

Synopsis:
Stephanie Tranquille's first taste of pushing change through a resistant system came early. At NAB, she was one of the first people to offshore work to India, a move that opened unexpected doors in her own career, including a path into newsreading. That instinct, to push a system toward what it should look like rather than accept what it already was, followed her to REA Group and then to Amazon. The most visible example: taking the Amazon Ads Global Speaker Program from 31 accredited speakers to 428, for one of the largest brands in the world. She changed how the company's PR team approved speakers and hit a specific goal on increasing representation, not to add more voices for the sake of it, but to make sure the right voices were heard, not only the leaders who already sat at the top of the org chart. That standard extended to some of the industry's biggest stages, including Cannes Lions and Advertising Week, where she worked to make sure who got on stage actually reflected the full range of regions, backgrounds, and communities the industry serves. That work is part of what pushed her to build her own business, so she could keep making that case on her own terms. This keynote breaks down how that kind of change actually gets built: not through title or authority, but through the specific moves that get a resistant system to shift.

Why it matters:
Change efforts fail more often from a lack of method than a lack of will. This talk replaces vague inspiration with an actual method, tested on a global program and proven by a 13x result, so audiences leave with something they can apply, not just admire.

Emotional Intelligence in an AI World

Synopsis:
AI is already part of daily work. It writes, analyzes, and moves fast. What it cannot do is read a room, sense tension, or earn real trust. This keynote is about the skill that becomes more valuable as workplaces get faster and more automated: emotional intelligence. Drawing on 27 years across finance, tech, and global events, training more than 40,000 people worldwide, and a guest spot on NAB's Digital podcast, Stephanie shows audiences how to build emotional intelligence on purpose, so they stay essential no matter how much work shifts to machines. This keynote can be tailored to focus on high-stakes confidence, storytelling, or communication style, depending on the audience.

Why it matters:
The workplace has already shifted. As automation takes over more tasks, connection, trust, and self-awareness are what set people apart, not what gets left behind. This talk gives audiences a practical way to build that advantage on purpose, before the shift outpaces them.

Synopsis:
Across five industries and ten countries, Stephanie Tranquille's biggest career leaps didn't come from being picked. They came from asking, for a role that didn't exist yet, for a seat nobody had offered her. This keynote is built around that pattern: the moment she asked for something she believed could be hers, and what it took to own both the win and the low points that came with it, equally, without dressing one up or hiding the other. It's a story about self-advocacy as something you practice and survive, not a slogan on a poster.

Why it matters:
Most career advice tells people to wait: to be patient, to let good work speak for itself. That advice keeps good people stuck. This talk gives audiences permission, and a real, unpolished example, of what it looks like to ask first instead of waiting to be picked.