Ronan Harrington is an international keynote speaker and one of the world’s leading authorities on resilient, high-performance. Blending lived experience with the latest behavioural science, Ronan inspires leaders to achieve extraordinary productivity without sacrificing wellbeing. His groundbreaking Resilient Performance Method is trusted by global organisations including Deloitte, EY, PwC, KPMG, L’Oréal, Oxford University, and the UK Treasury. Known for his electrifying delivery and candid storytelling, Ronan helps companies shift from burnout culture to sustainable excellence. His signature approach combines emotional depth, sharp insight, and humour - making his talks as memorable as they are transformational.
Ronan’s journey began with a BA in Psychology from the University of Galway, followed by an MA in Economics for Transition at Schumacher College, and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Oxford. Early in his career, he served as a Futurist to the UK Foreign Office, helping to shape policy for a rapidly changing world. This exposure to geopolitics and large-scale systems change gave him rare foresight into the challenges leaders face today. Ronan later became Director of Futures Strategy at RPC, where he worked on organisational innovation and change management. These formative experiences laid the foundation for his later thought leadership in resilience, wellbeing, and leadership performance.
Over the past decade, Ronan has earned wide industry recognition. He was named a LinkedIn Top Voice on Public Speaking, Highly Commended as Best Live Speaker, and voted among the Top 5 Best Storytellers at the 2023 Speaker Awards. As a Resilience Specialist at Mycelium, his work was Highly Commended by the 2020 'This Can Happen' Awards for workplace mental health innovation. Ronan has also served as Strategic Lead at RethinkX, contributing to the influential report 'Rethinking Humanity'. His client list includes major names such as Sky, Aviva, IHG, Sage, and Kellogg’s, all of whom turn to him to re-energise their teams and cultivate lasting performance cultures.
What sets Ronan apart is his remarkable personal story. After years of high-pressure leadership, he was diagnosed with a chronic pain condition - an experience he continues to navigate today. This lived adversity brings unmatched credibility to his message. Audiences don’t just learn the science of resilience; they feel it. That emotional connection, paired with practical tools and future-ready strategies, makes Ronan Harrington an essential voice for organisations navigating uncertainty, disruption, and the urgent need for sustainable performance.
Ronan Harrington's official speaking topics are listed below:
Sustainable High Performance: From Endurance to Resilience
Running on fumes? Shift from burnout to resilient, peak performance.
In this fast‑paced keynote you’ll learn how to:
- Apply the latest principles of sustainable high performance
- Adopt work rhythms used by elite teams
- Build resilience to handle greater pressure
- Regain control with smart productivity tools
- Balance deep focus and purposeful collaboration
- Ignite excellence across your organisation
Walk away with a practical model for thriving while you accelerate growth.
True Resilience: A Story That Touches Home
Ideas spark inspiration, but stories anchor them. To deepen any keynote, Ronan interlaces sharp insights with his personal resilience journey.
Just weeks after operating at the height of national politics, he was diagnosed with a lifelong chronic‑pain condition. Seven years on, he still leads, and learns, from that unrelenting reality.
This continuing adversity, not a one‑off triumph, reveals:
- The true cost of unchecked leadership pressure
- How to perform when the strain never subsides
- Mindset shifts that turn pain into purposeful action
Blend this candid narrative with any topic to give intellectual content the emotional weight that makes it unforgettable.
Permacrisis Resilience: Thrive When Chaos Is the New Constant
Supply shocks, cyber breaches, climate extremes, AI upheaval, tariff wars: disruption now hits on repeat.
This high‑energy keynote from a Foreign Office Futurist reframes resilience from a one‑off bounce‑back to a daily operating system that keeps people focused, healthy, and ready to seize opportunity in any storm.
Audiences will learn to:
- Hold clarity huddles that align priorities and eliminate confusion
- Deploy pulse resets that release tension and keep team cohesion steady
- Run rapid scenario sprints with decision presets that cut response time in half
- Turn every crisis log into a learning engine that powers continuous improvement
- Build a Resilience Rhythm calendar that hard‑wires renewal, reflection, and readiness
Attendees leave with a four‑pillar model, a practical scorecard, and a toolbox of rituals that transform endless volatility into enduring competitive edge.
High Performance, Low Burnout
Today’s work cultures push people toward exhaustion, yet peak output and well‑being can coexist. Ronan unveils a science‑based framework for sustainable excellence.
Audience take‑aways:
- A clear lens on what drains, and what renews, energy
- Evidence‑backed tactics to reset daily work habits
- Simple rituals that protect recovery and prevent depletion
- Methods for embedding resilience in team and organisational culture
Expect a mindset reset: attendees leave with a practical blueprint for lasting, high‑impact performance without the burnout.
Leading Resilient High‑Performance Teams
Many managers sprint from fire to fire, stuck in task triage. This keynote‑plus‑workshop reframes them as conductors of human capability: leaders who create time, head‑space, and trust so teams perform at their peak.
Participants will learn to:
- Replace crisis‑driven hand‑offs with collaborative rituals that surface issues early
- Shift culture from finger‑pointing to shared ownership and rapid course‑correction
- Model resilience so composure becomes contagious
- Design “high‑freedom / high‑accountability” guardrails that let talent run
- Use precision appreciation to energise effort and loyalty
Attendees leave with a practical framework for turning overwhelmed groups into motivated, self‑directed teams, where people feel seen, supported, and ready to achieve exceptional results together.
Human‑First AI: Future‑Proof Performance for the Automation Era
As intelligent tech accelerates, the biggest risk isn’t robots—it’s a workforce paralysed by FOBO (Fear of Becoming Obsolete), secrecy, and change fatigue. This keynote reframes AI adoption as a people‑powered transformation that boosts engagement, trust, and performance.
Audiences will learn to:
- Turn FOBO into Future‑Ready confidence with a roadmap from anxiety to adaptive growth
- Create psychological‑safety “sandboxes” where smart experiments—and mistakes—are celebrated, not punished
- Embed inclusive, ethical guardrails so everyone trusts the tech and the outcomes
- Map a Skills Flight‑Plan: sunset tasks, reskill talent, and hire for new hybrid roles
- Protect well‑being amidst flux with micro‑routines that keep energy and optimism high
Attendees leave with a practical, human‑metrics scorecard and a toolbox of rituals that turn AI disruption into a powerful catalyst for culture, capability, and competitive edge.
Relational Excellence: The Psychological‑Safety Advantage
Silence and self‑censorship throttle innovation; candour unlocks it. This keynote‑and‑workshop shows how to replace fear‑based norms with a trust‑rich, high‑accountability culture.
Participants will learn to:
- Define psychological safety in performance terms, not just “niceness”
- Install daily habits that build trust while holding a firm bar on results
- Reframe “failure” as fast feedback that fuels creative problem‑solving
- Diagnose the real causes of underperformance and turn them into ownership
Attendees leave with a repeatable playbook for fearless dialogue, bold experimentation, and collective excellence.
High‑Performance Leadership Talk Show: Hard‑Won Wisdom, Live
Skip another slide deck of generic advice. This moderator‑led talk‑show taps the expertise already inside your walls.
Senior leaders take the hot seat, sharing unfiltered stories of triumphs, missteps, and course‑corrections. Ronan links their insights to the latest research, turning raw experience into clear, evidence‑backed takeaways.
What participants gain
- A candid, behind‑the‑scenes view of how top leaders solve high‑pressure problems
- Field‑tested tactics to drive results without burnout
- Real‑world examples of psychological safety in tough politics
- Sharp guidance on behaviours to emulate, and pitfalls to avoid
- A live, vulnerability‑rich development session that sticks
Mine internal wisdom, stress‑test it against modern science, and leave with action‑ready playbooks for sustainable high performance.
Boundless Growth Mindset: Shatter the Success Ceiling
Disruption punishes complacency. Organisations that win see “better” as a daily requirement, not a quarterly slogan. This keynote‑and‑workshop shows how to hard‑wire a growth mindset so continual learning drives continual advantage.
Participants will learn to:
- Adopt belief systems that turn stretch goals into standard practice
- Reframe challenges and setbacks as data for rapid iteration
- Embed rituals that normalise feedback, curiosity, and skill‑sharing
- Coach and model growth behaviours that compound ambition
Attendees leave with a repeatable playbook for cultures where up‑skilling, experimentation, and rising standards are business as usual.
Extraordinary Productivity: From Busyness to Brilliant Impact
Digital overload has turned knowledge work into constant firefighting. This keynote replaces reactive “lawn‑mowing” with a high‑leverage system that restores focus, energy, and standout client value.
Audience take‑aways:
- Spot and dismantle toxic productivity norms that drain capacity
- Manage personal energy for sustained deep‑work focus and renewal
- Redesign client engagement for higher, longer‑lasting value creation
- Build a culture of healthy excellence: high standards without burnout
- Shift daily effort from low‑level churn to high‑impact, scalable work
Attendees leave with a clear blueprint for concentrated excellence—no more scatter, no more burnout, just results that wow.
Back in the Groove: Power Moves for Better Mental Health
This upbeat, humour‑laced keynote shows how small external tweaks spark big internal balance.
Participants will learn to:
- Reclaim a manageable work agenda
- Align the four pillars—home, family, work, health
- Fuel brain and body for a brighter outlook
- Self‑coach through life pivots
- Normalise open conversations about mental health
Apply resilient mindsets when the going gets tough
Perfect for well‑being webinars or lunch‑and‑learns, the talk equips audiences with practical moves to stay steady, energised, and in control.
Candour Unleashed: Mastering Difficult Conversations
Tough talks needn’t be trust‑killers. This keynote‑plus‑workshop delivers a fresh spin on Radical Candour, turning high‑stakes feedback into relationship‑strengthening dialogue.
Participants will learn to:
- Create conditions where colleagues feel safe to be candid
- Break tension fast with clear‑the‑air techniques
- Use “rupture‑and‑repair” cycles to deepen trust after conflict
- Escape fawning or avoidance when agendas collide
- Challenge directly while signalling genuine care
Through live practice and pragmatic tools, attendees leave ready to swap eggshell walking for confident, caring candour that unlocks performance.
Official Feedback from In-Person & Virtual Events
"Ronan’s keynote was one of the stand out moments at our conference. A 500 person standing ovation and by all accounts, not a dry eye in the house." - Oliver, Managing Director, HR TechX
"The event with Ronan was a full success! He gave a very inspiring and engaging speech and touched everybody in the room – intellectually and emotionally. He organised a very good mix between presenting facts & figures, giving practical tips and initiating short breakout-sessions to ensure full engagement of all participants. Ronan fulfilled 100% of our expectations." - Thomas, CFO Siemens Energy
“Ronan is a world class resilience teacher. His ability to connect leaders to themselves and each other is rare.” - John, Head of Strategic Relationships, KPMG
"Our Leadership Team is still talking about it and it has prompted a very healthy and open discussion about how we build resilience for ourselves and our people. Thank you Ronan – you were brilliant." - Scott, Head of Financial Consulting, Deloitte
"Insightful, authentic and engaging. His personal story is highly compelling and I would recommend anyone working in a high performance culture or role to spend time with Ronan." - Chris, VP Technology, IBM
"I left Ronan’s talk truly speechless and determined to take better care of myself. A rare, powerful alchemy that goes so far beyond a typical “keynote speaker” it seems a miss to even refer to it as that." - Julia, Director, Employee Experience AKQA
- 2025 - Partnered with all 4 of the big 4 (Deloitte, EY, PwC, KPMG) to implment his new model of Sustainable High Performance
- 2024 - Became a LinkedIn Top Voice on Public Speaking
- 2023 – Voted Top 5 Best Storytellers at the Speaker Awards
- 2023 – Highly Commended: Best Live Speaker at the Speaker Awards
- 2023 – Named LinkedIn Top Voice on Public Speaking
- 2022 – Delivered keynote at HRTechX to a standing ovation from 500+ attendees
- 2021 – Resilience Specialist, Mycelium (Programme Highly Commended by This Can Happen Awards)
- 2020 – Strategic Lead, RethinkX – "Rethinking Humanity" publication
- 2013 – Strategist, UK Foreign Office: Scenario planning for 2030
- 2013–2014 – Master of Public Policy, University of Oxford
- 2012–2013 – MA, Economics for Transition, Schumacher College
- 2005–2008 – BA, Psychology, University of Galway
How to hire Ronan Harrington
Contact the Champions Speakers Agency to provisionally enquire about hiring Ronan Harrington for your next event, today. To get in touch, simply call an official booking agent on 0207 1010 553 or email us at [email protected] for more information.
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