Power, Status & Influence Conference 2026

Professor Adam Galinsky is the Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School and Distinguished Management Scholar at INSEAD.

He has published more than 300 scientific articles in the areas of leadership, negotiations, decision-making, and ethics and received dozens of research and teaching awards.

Adam is the best-selling author of INSPIRE and Friend & Foe and a prolific speaker, including a popular TED talk. His expert reports and testimony in legal cases involving defamation and reputational damage have generated more than $1 Billion in verdicts and settlements.

He is the Executive and Associate Producer on two documentaries short-listed (final 15) for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards.

Lisa Leong is the host of This Working Life on ABC Radio National and an experienced broadcaster, media commentator and business consultant.

She is the co-author of the book “This Working Life” published by Hardie Grant (Australia and New Zealand) and Urano World Publishing (US and Canada).

Lisa studied Science/Law at the University of Melbourne and is a graduate of the Customer-Focused Innovation program at Stanford University’s GSB and the Stanford d.school.

Lisa’s work and unique approach have been the subject of Harvard case study HLS 17-06: “Client-Centred Innovation at HSF” and her TEDx talk: ’Can robots make us more human?’. 

Michelle Ryan is a Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology and Director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership.

With Alex Haslam, she uncovered the phenomenon of the glass cliff. Since its discovery, the term ‘glass cliff’ has entered public discourse and informs and shapes debate, and public understanding of women’s leadership positions.

Michelle is currently researching the way in which context and identity shape and constrain women's career choices. She also examines women's ambition in the workplace, work-life balance, men's support for gender equality, gender differences in risk taking, leadership succession, workplace intersectionality, workplace gender stereotypes, ambition and gendered status in the workplace.

Laura Kray is a professor at Berkeley Haas, where she has been on the faculty since 2002, and holds the Ned and Carol Spieker Leadership Chair.

She is a leading expert on the role of gender stereotypes and mindsets on workplace behavior, including negotiations and ethical decision-making. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and has been recognized with multiple best research awards from the Academy of Management and the International Association of Conflict Management.

Her research aimed at debunking myths about the gender pay gap was recognized with a Decade Award from the Academy of Management Discoveries for having the greatest social impact on social and alternative media from 2015-2025.

Ashley Martin is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University.

Her research examines the primacy of gender in social cognition and explains why gender is a uniquely powerful dimension of categorization, even compared to other highly impactful social categories such as race and age. Her work has appeared in outlets such as The Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Organization Science, and Academy of Management Journal.

The impact of these contributions has been recognized with “Rising Star” (APS), “Early Career” (ISCON, Stanford), and “Best Paper” (ISCON) awards, as well as election to the Society for Experimental Social Psychology.

Sally Capp AO is one of Australia's most prominent public leaders.

She served as the 104th Lord Mayor of Melbourne from 2018 to 2024, becoming the first woman to be directly elected to the position. During her six-year tenure she led Melbourne's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and spearheaded the $300 million Melbourne Recovery Fund. A trailblazer across sectors, Sally was also the first woman appointed Agent-General for Victoria (representing the state in the UK, Europe and Israel) and the first woman on the board of Collingwood Football Club.

Earlier in her career she served as CEO of the Committee for Melbourne, COO of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Victorian Executive Director of the Property Council of Australia. She began her working life as a solicitor, holds Law (Honours) and Commerce degrees from the University of Melbourne, and co-founded a venture that she took to the ASX.

In 2023 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to Melbourne, local government, business, and the community.

She is currently a Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Business and Economics. Her lived experience navigating power, gender, and leadership across law, business, government, and community makes her an ideal moderator for this panel.

Tim Ford until recently served as the CEO and Managing Director of ASX listed Treasury Wine Estates, one of the world's largest wine companies, during a period of significant strategic challenge and transformation - including navigating trade disruptions, the impact of Chinese tariffs on Australian wine exports, unprecedented inflation, major climatic events and significant strategic restructuring.

His leadership experience spans high-pressure, high-stakes environments, spanning multiple cultures and countries where the relationship between power, stress, and organisational performance was constantly in play.

Melissa Hamilton is a CEO and executive mentor, leadership development expert, and former CEO who had the privilege of leading 5,000 incredible people globally, earning recognition through awards for cultural excellence, growth, and scale.

As co-founder of The Brave Group, she now empowers C-suite leaders to drive organizational success through authentic, courageous leadership.

Melissa is the creator and host of the Brave Feminine Leadership podcast, where she has interviewed 250+ global leaders, breaking down the myths of leadership and exploring what it truly takes to lead with impact.

She coaches and mentors CEOs and C-suite leaders and is regularly called upon to mentor female leaders and unlock untapped talent within organizations, helping companies build stronger leadership pipelines.

Through The Brave Group, she provides executive coaching and development programs that deliver measurable impact. Her approach combines strategic insights with practical frameworks, giving audiences immediately actionable strategies for advancing their leadership and organizational influence.

Seth Schwartz is a Melbourne-based Managing Director and the Co-Head of J.P. Morgan’s General Industries Investment Banking team in Australia.

In his current role, Seth has overall responsibility for a diversified range of key industry verticals, including our market leading Healthcare franchise in Australia and New Zealand. Seth is a 25 year veteran of the firm, having worked in New York prior to returning to Australia in 2005. In his time with J.P. Morgan, Seth has successfully led numerous mission critical mergers, acquisitions, advisory and financing transactions for many of J.P. Morgan’s most important clients.

Seth has a Bachelor of Economics and Bachelor of Laws Degrees from the University of Queensland, and an MBA from the Melbourne Business School, where he graduated with distinction.

Modupe Akinola is the Barbara and David Zalaznick Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and Faculty Director of the Bernstein Center for Leadership and Ethics.

She is one of the world's leading researchers on the biology of stress and leadership - examining how organisational environments generate stress and how that stress shapes performance, creativity, and decision-making. Her distinctive approach combines behavioural observation with physiological measurement (hormonal and cardiovascular responses) to study how the mind and body interact under pressure.

She also conducts influential research on workforce diversity, including the biases that shape recruitment and retention of women and people of colour in organisations.

Before her academic career, Modupe worked in professional services at Bain & Company and Merrill Lynch. She holds a BA, MA, and PhD in Psychology and Organisational Behavior from Harvard University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She received Columbia Business School's Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence and, in 2018, became the first Black professor in Columbia Business School's history to earn tenure.

She is the host of the TED Business Podcast and served as the stress coach for Chris Hemsworth in the National Geographic series Limitless.

She advises global organisations including HSBC, Disney, and Staples on leadership development, stress management, and diversity.

Professor Cordelia Fine is an acclaimed writer and scholar of science in the History & Philosophy of Science Program at the University of Melbourne.

Her work challenges familiar misconceptions about brains, evolution, gender, and diversity, offering a "witty corrective" (Nature) and "keen precision and sharp humor" (New York Times).

Her books, including Delusions of Gender, Testosterone Rex, and Patriarchy Inc., have been described as "essential reading" (Financial Times), "provocative and often fascinating" (Economist), and "important" (The Australian).

Nathanael Fast is a Professor of Management and Executive Director of the USC Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

He also co-founded and co-directs the Psychology of Technology Institute.

His award-winning research and teaching examine the behavioral determinants and consequences of AI adoption, with implications for power dynamics, leadership effectiveness, and the future of work.

He serves as an advisor to startups and companies on purpose-driven AI.

He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.