ABOUT Brad
Brad’s Bio:
Brad is not just a leadership speaker; he is known as being a leader of leaders. He has built groundbreaking products that have disrupted the world's largest corporations, has guided C-level executives through business transformation initiatives and collaborated with CEOs and Boards to cultivate adaptable cultures that nurture resilient and innovative people.
Brad's keynote presentations and leadership workshops are transformational and highly interactive. He has developed and speaks on “Radical Leadership,” a term he coined that is recognised globally and is now used by Harvard Business School to describe the mission-critical mandate of today’s modern business leaders.
His recent clients include CEO Institute, Singularity U, Minter Ellison, Rio Tinto, Port Waratah Coal Services, Endeavour Group, ARTC, Pitcher Partners, Mazars, EO Org, Western Sydney University and International Executive Coaching and Leadership (IECL).
As a keynote speaker, Brad’s special gift lies in his powerful lived experiences, which capture the audience's attention and catalyse change. These stories are drawn from his extensive journey as an award-winning Enterprise Technology Entrepreneur, Corporate Innovator, and proud “First Nations” man of Garigal, Muroordial and Walkaloa descent and a descendant of Bungaree known in European History as the First Australian.
As a leadership speaker Brad brings over 25 years of experience building disruptive products and services and leading innovative change and innovation into some of the largest global organisations including Visa, CBA, UBS, Swisscom and DXC Technology.
As a technology speaker he plays at the intersection of where technology meets humanity and has been involved in significant AI based projects since 2010 across the globe, mentoring startup founders in Silicon Valley and New York, and focuses his keynotes on AI being a people problem not a technology problem.
As a First Nations leadership Speaker he brings his cultural knowledge, talent for the Didgeridoo, song in language and immersive storytelling to put a modern leadership twist on how our Ancient Aboriginal culture can unlock the keys to modern day leadership as we move into an era where intelligence is being rapidly commoditised and our human skills require amplification.
Brad’s conference opening and closing keynotes, Welcome and Acknowledgement to Country are renowned for being a highlight of many conference participants and consistently talked about as being “the best Welcome to Country” conference participants have ever seen.
His high-energy and authentic presence delivers a fast-paced and immersive keynote presentation and a journey that creates a contagious energy that motivates audiences and leaves a lasting impression. Brad pushes individuals and organisations to rethink what leadership is in today's uncertain and volatile business environment, encouraging them to step out of their comfort zones and embrace the benefits of becoming Radical Leaders.
“Absolutely fantastic! Our people have never given a standing ovation before.”
Port Waratah Coal Services
Brad’s Timeline:
Brad’s formal training and qualifications were as a scientist graduating from the University of Technology Sydney. Through a twist of fate he ended up co-founding his first technology startup Computer Market Research.
In 1995, he became the youngest VP for BEA Systems, the most successful enterprise technology startup to come out of Silicon Valley in the 1990’s, which was sold to Oracle Corporation for $8.5 billion.
Learning the skills to scale a business at speed and leading teams of people twenty years his senior, he honed the skills of being a motivator and change catalyst.
This led Brad to the founding team in two more startups in the Enterprise Computing space; ANATAS and Servicemesh. Over the next 15 years he spent much of his time speaking on stages at international technology conferences for businesses such as SAP, Vmware, Microsoft, TMForum, The Data Centre Alliance, EMC, Dell, HP and IBM.
During this time, Brad drove major business model transformations as an advisor at corporations such as Swisscom, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Visa, Optus and Union Bank of Switzerland. His curiosity about the barriers to change and disruption he observed in large corporations started forming during these engagements.
Selling the business for $USD280M was the pinnacle of a twenty five year journey of continuous innovation.
2015 saw him encounter his biggest life challenge when he was thrust into a four year legal battle against the F.B.I and US Government.
Cut off from the life he once loved, Brad had to take all of the lessons he had learned as an innovator and change catalyst and apply them to his own life, which had been disrupted in ways that are unimaginable.
In a coffee shop in 2018, a decision was made to take all of the learnings of the last 25 years and use the adversity of the situation as a metaphor for the tsunami of change and disruption that Brad saw every leader on the planet having to face over the next decade. A realisation that all leaders faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is where “Radical leadership” was created.
On realising that in a destabilised business environment most leaders have never been taught the capabilities to create value and foster a culture of resilience, Brad set out to ensure this leadership capability gap was closed.
First as a series of workshops and then as a keynote speaker, Brad gained significant traction with organisations such as Singularity U, Minter Ellison, Queensland Health, ANSTO, Endeavor Group, EO Organisation, Rio Tinto and Port Waratah Coal Services. His methods and teachings were also embedded into programs at Western Sydney University's Venture Makers Program.
Brad’s first book “Radical Thinking: Five Essential Capabilities for Leading in an Age of Reinvention” is a comprehensive guide for all leaders in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous business environment, challenging leaders to develop a new set of capabilities through this tremendous age of reinvention.
Brad’s keynotes “Radical Leadership”, “Radical Intelligence”, “Radical Innovation”, and “Collision Course” have received accolades from around the world for their humour, authenticity, and transformational qualities.