InVentures magazine calls her “The Reinvention Guru.” TEDxNavesink calls her “The Queen of Reinvention.” Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva is a scientist, business theorist, former mining executive, serial entrepreneur, and award-winning author specializing in resilience and reinvention.
As a consultant and an educator, Dr. Nadya has worked with Fortune 500 and global leaders such as Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation, Coca-Cola, IBM, Cisco, L’Oreal Group, Danone, Kohler, Erste Bank, Henkel, Knauf Insulation, and Vienna Insurance Group — helping them reinvent products, leadership practices, and business models to stay relevant in turbulent times.
A former Coca-Cola Chaired Professor of Sustainable Development at IEDC-Bled School of Management in Slovenia, she has taught leadership, strategy, innovation, and change at top business schools around the world, including Case Western Reserve University (USA), IPADE (Mexico), and CEDEP (France), where she also served on the Advisory Board.
As a speaker, she has delivered four TEDx talks across Europe and the US and appeared on hundreds of stages worldwide — from intimate boardrooms to audiences of 5,000+ — blending science, storytelling, and hands-on exercises that make her keynotes both inspiring and practical. In 2024, she co-founded the Reinvention Summit, bringing together leading thinkers in strategy, innovation, and transformation.
From 2012, she has also served as a fractional equivalent of a Chief Transformation O cer for the Eurasian Resources Group, a leading global metals and mining company with nearly 67,000 employees across Kazakhstan, Africa, and Brazil.
Dr. Nadya is the author of several acclaimed books, including Embedded Sustainability: The Next Big Competitive Advantage (named one of the “Best Sustainability Books of All Time”), Over shed Ocean Strategy: Powering Up Innovation for a Resource-Deprived World (Soundview’s Best Book of 2014), and the international bestseller The Chief Reinvention O cer Handbook: How to Thrive in Chaos — winner of the Axiom Business Book Award and the prestigious Kirkus Star for exceptional merit.
A regular contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review, her insights have been featured in media outlets worldwide.
She earned her PhD in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, where she also served as Associate Director at the Center for Business as an Agent of World Bene t (now the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value).
Ask any manager or entrepreneur on planet Earth, “What is your key challenge?”, and you are sure to hear something over and over again: “How do we stay afloat?”
The fast-moving up-and-down economy we live in today makes staying afloat increasingly difficult. Just as we handle one crisis, another appears on the horizon. Artificial Intelligence, block chain, circular economy, digital, Industry 4.0, millennials, new competition, new regulations, political turmoil, sharing economy, substitute products, you name it – the waves of disruption come crushing faster and faster, fundamentally changing the way we work, compete, and profit.
With such speed and scale of change, how do we survive— and even thrive?
In this exciting, yet pragmatic research-based talk, Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva shows you how business reality has changed – and how to take advantage of these changes. That includes ground-breaking insights into:
• Why you need to reinvent yourself and your company every 3.5 years
• What are the key trends driving the speed and scale of change and how to address them
• What are the best practices across industries and geographies that help companies not only survive the speed of change, but use it to build new unmatched competitive advantage
• How to combat resistance to change and develop a continuous reinvention mindset
• How business systems should be redesigned – including budgeting, operations, R&D and much more – to address the speed of change and increase your company’s agility and preparedness
This is a talk for leaders.
We all know the next big crisis is coming. We don’t know when, why, or what will take place, but history is clear: business is cyclical, and a new crisis is just around the corner. How do we prepare?
Companies and their leaders talk about getting ready. But let’s face it: when the rubber hits the road, we get overwhelmed by the day-to-day tasks, KPIs, and the endless to-do lists. Thinking about a bright new tomorrow is exciting, but the bosses are waiting, the customers are calling, and the shareholders are demanding results today. How can we lead reinvention without losing our minds?
After personally educating, coaching, and developing nearly 10,000 executives, Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva is ready to share in-depth framework for how to lead in our new VUCA reality – the volatile, uncertain, complex ,and ambiguous world.
During this talk, Nadya will teach leaders how to design their own leadership reinvention cycle. At the heart of surviving and thriving in the accelerating markets lies the art of defining what should be changed and what should be kept. Using the tested methodology, in this talk Nadya shows you pragmatic ways to make reinvention a habit, a system, a powerful life hack.
This includes answers to such questions as:
• How can executives embed reinvention and renewal into their everyday leadership
• What leadership solutions – including specific approaches to strategy, organization, and change management – best fit today’s business reality
• What does a healthy reinvention cycle look like and how can executives start building one today
• How do you lead reinvention if suddenly it is you who needs to make it happen
Speaks to leaders struggling with change fatigue. Shows how to turn skepticism into energy and mobilize teams around reinvention using science-backed, field-tested strategies for faster, smoother transformation
“Outstanding business insights in a work brimming with energy and vitality.” —Kirkus Reviews
In this visual guide to thriving in the midst of chaos, scientist, entrepreneur and “Reinvention Guru” Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva brings together the insights from a community of 3000+ “reinventors” to offer a bold new method for business resilience during disruptive times.
Running a successful business amidst constant change is overwhelming. Just as we handle one disruption, another crisis looms on the horizon. How do you survive and even thrive?
4-time TEDx speaker Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva and her global Chief Reinvention Officer community understand the struggle and helped countless companies and leaders deal with change by reinventing their products, processes, and leadership practices. Now she brings to you a powerful blend of cross-disciplinary research and battle-tested tools to help you diagnose, design, and implement a reinvention system that allows your company to stop combatting or resisting change – and instead helps you turn every disruption into your greatest opportunity.