Speaking
Marderé delivers keynotes that don’t just inspire — they recalibrate how leaders think and act.
MARDERÉ BIRKILL MCC · CEC · MBL Founder, Sage & Summit Consulting
She doesn’t teach leadership. She returns leaders to themselves.
Most leadership development works on the outside, skills, frameworks, communication styles. Marderé Birkill works on the layer underneath: the beliefs, the patterns, and the identity story that is quietly running every leadership decision a person makes.
The result isn’t just better performance. It’s a different leader. One who leads from clarity instead of pressure, from values instead of fear, and from a settled sense of who they are, not who the room expects them to be.
WHO SHE SPEAKS TO
Senior leaders, emerging executives, and leadership teams in energy, construction, government, and professional services. Particularly powerful for leaders who have been promoted for their technical expertise and are navigating the shift to people-first leadership.
WHAT HAPPENS IN THE ROOM
Marderé doesn’t deliver presentations. She creates experiences. Her sessions are known for the quality of the silence, the moment when a room of leaders stops taking notes and starts sitting with something they’ve just understood about themselves.
“Her stage presence is both engaging and compelling, guiding the audience on a journey of discovery and growth. Marderé’s message is something every manager and supervisor should want to hear.” Wes Scott, EventWorx Corporation · Oil Sands Expo 2024
“Even our most sceptical participant was enthralled. Everyone left the room feeling that they had added valuable contributions. The outcomes are still in use in our decision-making today.” — Shadia Amblie, Chief Administrative Officer · Lac La Biche County
“Bright energy, warm presence, strong messages, and easy to understand. We enjoyed the real-world examples and Marderé’s skill at engaging the audience throughout.” — Xerox Leadership Association Board
Dynamic leadership: leading from the inside to become more agile.
The old leadership playbook was written for a stable world. We no longer live in one.
Based on Marderé’s research contribution to Dynamic Leadership and Coaching: The Handbook for Developing Exceptional Leaders in Turbulent Times, published with Fellows of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, Harvard, this keynote redefines what effective leadership actually looks like when the ground keeps moving. Nine leadership approaches. One inside shift. And a model that doesn’t just survive disruption, it grows through it.
Keynote 45–60 min · Workshop half day · Retreat full day
The Bottleneck Boss
Your brilliance got you promoted. Now it’s the thing holding your team back.
The Bottleneck Boss is the most common, and most costly, leadership pattern in high-performing organizations. This session names the twelve habits that create it, introduces the VIVID model for understanding why people actually come to their leader, and delivers the one identity shift that transforms a bottleneck into a multiplier.
Based on Marderé’s forthcoming book The Bottleneck Boss.
Keynote 45–60 min · Workshop half day
People centered culture - leading with authenticity, human impact
Your people aren’t disengaged because they don’t care. They’re disengaged because nobody has shown them that their leader does.
People-centred leadership isn’t a philosophy for good times. It’s the only model that actually holds in a volatile, AI-disrupted, change-saturated world. This session makes the case — through neuroscience, real coaching stories, and hard industry examples — and gives leaders the specific shifts that build resilient cultures from the inside out.
Keynote 45–60 min · Workshop half day · Retreat full day
Leader, Your Impact is Never Zero
You never walk into a room neutral.
Every interaction you have as a leader — every silence, every response, every moment of presence or distraction — lands somewhere. It either builds something or it costs something. There is no zero.
This session is a direct challenge to the leaders who are leading on autopilot: those who assume that because nothing is visibly broken, nothing is being lost. Your impact is constant. The only question is whether it’s intentional.
Keynote 45–60 min · Workshop half day
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