2026 Keynote Speakers

This year’s Executive Summit will feature several insightful keynote presentations on timely and relevant topics, including Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Government and Regulatory Affairs, as well as an industry economic forecast for 2026 and a broad economic outlook. A full agenda will be available in the coming weeks.

Confirmed keynote speakers for the 2026 Executive Summit:

Dan Chuparkoff

Innovation & A.I. Expert

The world was already filled with an overwhelming stream of constant change. Now, people are facing the biggest change yet: Artificial Intelligence. Teams today are buried under an avalanche of information and technology can help. But it’s also one more thing on a pile that’s already too big.

DAN CHUPARKOFF isn’t just a speaker – he’s one of the world’s leading experts on innovation, AI, and the future of teams. He spent three decades as an innovative leader at companies like Google, McKinsey, and Atlassian. Dan built, led, and reinvented the teams who built products for billions of customers.

He knows that a constantly-changing world constantly demands new ways of working. Dan’s superpower is making complex things simple and useful. With his formula for HARNESSING THE POWER OF INNOVATION, he’s helped teams of every shape and size to harness the power of reinvention to escape disruption and nd success. Dan shows teams how to harness the power of technology to learn faster, collaborate faster, create autonomy faster, and create the impact they need for the decades ahead. 

David Burkus

Bestselling Author & Management Professor

One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David Burkus’ forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever.

He is the bestselling author of four books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, USA Today, Fast Company, the Financial Times, Bloomberg Business Week, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS This Morning. Since 2017, Burkus has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. A sought-after international speaker, his TED Talk has been viewed over 2 million times. He’s worked with leaders from organizations across all industries including Google, Stryker, Fidelity, Viacom, and even the US Naval Academy.

A former business school professor, Burkus holds a master’s degree in organizational psychology from the University of Oklahoma, and a doctorate in strategic leadership from Regent University.

He lives outside of Tulsa with his wife and their two boys.

Dr. Christopher Thornberg

Economist

Dr. Christopher Thornberg has been called many things throughout his career, but his favorite thing to be called is correct.

Notably, he predicted the collapse of the sub-prime real estate bubble in 2006 and the Great Recession that followed. During the Covid-19 pandemic he was one of the few economists on record to correctly push back against the forecasting community’s panicked predictions of a depression. In the past two years, he has again stood against the grain, and stood out, for accurately forecasting that there would be no recession.

Dr. Thornberg left a teaching position at UCLA’s Business School in 2006 to found Beacon Economics, and under his leadership, the firm has become one of the nation’s most respected economic research organizations. He consults globally for private industry, cities, counties, and public agencies. A dynamic public speaker, he challenges audiences to question popular narratives – and to ask the right economic questions.