Holly Ransom is CEO and founder of Emergent, a consultancy that helps businesses and leaders adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world. She is also a polished keynote speaker of global repute, renowned for distilling her insights into presentations that provoke, challenge and inspire.

Rapid change is not only Holly Ransom’s area of professional expertise, it describes her meteoric career. Holly has compressed what would be a sparkling 25-year career into less than a decade, achieving more before her 30th birthday than most do in a lifetime. The youngest person to be named among Australia’s ‘100 Most Influential Women’, she is the former Chief of Staff to National Australia Bank’s Wealth CEO Andrew Hagger and a personally appointed business analyst to Rio Tinto Chief Executive, Sam Walsh. These roles taught her complex change strategy, public affairs and risk management, government and stakeholder engagement, as well as performance improvement through innovation and technology. 

Holly has also held many non-executive directorships, across not-for-profit and the public and private sectors. In 2012, she became the world’s youngest ever Rotary Club President and in 2014, she was appointed by the Australian Prime Minister to Chair the G20 Youth Summit. In 2016 she was honoured to become the youngest ever female director of an AFL Club, joining the board of the Port Adelaide Crows (though she remains a West Coast Eagles girl at heart!)

A popular contributor to publications such as The Australian Financial Review and The Huffington Post, Holly is a regular guest on television shows like ABC’s Q&A, Channel 7 News and Channel 10’s ‘The Project’. Outside of work, she had the honour of presenting a Peace Charter to the Dalai Lama and being named one of Richard Branson’s dream dinner guests, and has recently completed her first Ironman. 

Holly is uniquely positioned to challenge the way you lead, communicate and do business. She brings a rare combination of acumen and experience, mixed with the creativity and fearlessness of youth. Her insights are bold and game-changing and her presentation style informs and inspires. Holly represents the voice of a new generation with the wisdom of the one before.