What does the speaker talk about?
I speak about working with complexity, AI capability, governance and visibility, expertise, health and the point where a problem becomes real.
Speaking and media
Uncertainty is your friend.
A Sydney keynote speaker for conferences, leadership events, panels, offsites and podcasts. The story gets people listening. The useful point is what they take back to work.
Research governanceVision CRC, boards and audit
End-to-end buildFrom family group to exit
Founder · CEOCEO of meforme™. Building Key360™, and COREMEN™ with Ryan.
SpeakerKeynotes, panels, offsites and podcasts
Stories with a point
Pick a story. I’ll shape it for your room.
Each talk starts somewhere unexpected and leaves people with something useful to take back to work.
01The Dynamo and the Crohn.What happens when a life that wants to go fast meets a body that says no.
Built on twenty-five years with “the Crohn”, and every plan I’ve rearranged.
I’ve had Crohn’s since my twenties. It has cancelled plans, flights and a life in London, and taught me more than any job. This isn’t a recovery story with a neat ending. It’s about how you keep working, planning and living when your capacity changes week to week, and why “keep going” has to mean something different once it’s personal.
They leave with a better way to plan around what they can’t control, and a kinder definition of keeping going.
For keynotes, wellbeing weeks, women’s events and podcasts.
This is my personal experience, not medical advice.
Get in touch02The room nobody trains you for.Being wrong and being threatened feel almost identical. Only one needs a defence.
Built on building a business for someone else, then realising it depended on me to keep running.
I once built a strategy and business for someone I believed in. It was solid. Then I handed it over and it didn’t run, because I’d built something that needed me as the engine. What I loved was the building, not the running, and I hadn’t seen it. Workplaces pay us for certainty, so most of us never practise being wrong. This talk is about getting good at it.
They leave with how to tell “I’m wrong” from “I’m under attack”, and what to do once they know.
For leadership teams, conferences and offsites.
Get in touch03You don’t need to learn all of AI.Now that you can build almost anything, should you?
Built on stopping halfway through mapping a customer journey I’d done hundreds of times, because I wasn’t sure it still worked.
AI makes doing easier. It doesn’t make deciding easier. If the thinking was clear, AI makes it clearer. If it wasn’t, you just get to the wrong place faster.
They leave with three questions to ask before building anything: is it possible, is it reasonable, is it meaningful?
For boards, executives, all-staff sessions and offsites.
Get in touch04You can’t put an old head on young shoulders.Some things only time teaches, and every generation at work holds something the others have lost.
Built on a manager who stopped a room full of fast-moving people with one question: “Why do we need to grow?” Nobody had a real answer.
They leave with how to use the mix of ages in the room, instead of managing around it.
For people and culture teams, HR conferences and multigenerational workplaces.
Get in touch05Love your naysayer.The person who says “that won’t work” might be protecting the best version of your idea.
Built on why every build I run has someone whose job is to grill us.
They leave with how to invite real pushback early, and turn it into a stress test instead of a fight.
For teams, boards and change programs.
Get in touch06The messier, the better.The brief you’re given is almost never the real problem.
Built on ten years at Vision CRC, a 4am flower stand, and a family business through drought, fire and COVID.
They leave with a way to find the real problem, and test an idea before the money goes.
For leadership teams, founders and innovation days.
Get in touchFor event organisers
A Sydney keynote speaker for events that need a useful point.
I speak at conferences, leadership events, panels, team offsites and podcasts. The stories are personal, commercially grounded and shaped around the question your audience needs to take seriously.
What kinds of events suit these stories?
The stories are designed for conferences, leadership events, panels, team offsites, innovation days, wellbeing events and podcasts.
Can a talk be shaped for an event?
Yes. The first step is understanding the audience, the event theme and the useful question already waiting in the room.
Where is the speaker based?
Based in Sydney, Australia.
What is the best way to enquire?
Send the event date, audience, format and the question you want people still thinking about afterwards. A short email is enough to begin.
For event organisers
Speaker profile and organiser notes.
Everything needed to put the right story in front of your audience.
Short bio
Stacey Key is a founder, strategist and speaker. She turns lived experience, market insight and hard-to-see problems into stories people can use. Her talks are direct, funny and built to leave a useful question behind.
Suggested host introduction
Our guest is Stacey Key, a founder, strategist and speaker who works where lived experience, commercial reality and difficult problems meet. She joins us to explore [selected topic].
Long bio
Stacey Key is a founder, strategist and speaker based in Sydney. Her work spans research governance, boards, compliance, commercialisation and end-to-end business building. She spent ten years at Vision CRC, the largest vision correction research centre in the world, and helped build a family group of more than 100 staff through drought, bushfires and COVID to a clean exit. She is CEO of meforme™, built Key360™ with Fabian Conrad, and helped Ryan Key shape COREMEN™. Stacey speaks about the moment a problem gets real, what evidence is really telling us and how to build something useful from the mess.
Get in touch
Book a call, or send an email.
Choose the way that suits you. A few words are enough to get started.