John Austin
Ph.D.
ME, USCertainty, for all its comfort, is a dead end. Uncertainty is where life happens. Unlike generic "embrace change" keynotes, Dr. Austin provides specific techniques audiences apply immediately. We can all develop skills to thrive in moments when the future is uncertain.
"I give everyone in the audience the skills to be confident in a chaotic world...to sense what's emerging, adapt strategically, and learn rapidly as the world shifts." —John Austin, PhD
John Austin brings together a unique mix of experiences to create high-energy, mindset-shifting talks. He brings his experience as a global strategist, professor and leadership coach, stage actor, entrepreneur, and award-winning researcher to everything he does.
NEW BOOK: Certain About Uncertainty: Build Resilience, Gain Confidence, and Thrive in a Chaotic World (Spring 2026). Ideal as an event giveaway, providing practical tools participants need long after your event ends.
In highly interactive sessions built from his book, Certain About Uncertainty, audiences learn three actionable capabilities:
- Anticipatory awareness to detect disruption before it's obvious and while they still have options
- Adaptability to evolve expertise as contexts change without abandoning professional identity
- Learning agility to rapidly acquire new capabilities across unfamiliar domains
Unlike generic "embrace change" keynotes, Dr. Austin provides specific frameworks audiences apply immediately: uncertainty vectoring for mapping complex decisions, techniques for distinguishing signal from noise, and methods for building capabilities that work across multiple possible futures.
ABOUT JOHN
John Austin is known for helping individuals and organizations build capability and confidence in uncertain environments.He serves as the dean of the Honors College and the P.D. Merrill Endowed Chair of Business at the University of New England, where his work sits at the intersection of management, psychology, and foresight. For more than two decades, he has supported leaders in industries where change is constant and the future is often unexpected.
A former professor of management at Penn State University, John left academia to launch a company—an experience that shaped his lifelong interest in how people adapt, learn, and make decisions when the path ahead is unclear. After selling the company, he served as a principal at Decision Strategies International, a global firm recognized for its pioneering work in scenario planning. In 2020, he returned to higher education to build and lead new academic initiatives at UNE, including launching both the College of Business and the Honors College. Today, he combines academic leadership with active teaching in executive education programs at the Wharton School, Penn State, Duke Corporate Education, and Georgetown University.
John holds a PhD in organization studies from Boston College and a BA in economics from Johns Hopkins University. His research has earned five Best Paper Awards and has been cited more than 2,700 times. John’s new book is Certain about Uncertainty: Build Resilience, Gain Confidence, and Thrive in a Chaotic World. He is also the author of Unquestioned Brilliance: Navigating a Fundamental Leadership Trap. His writing has appeared in Fast Company, Chief Executive, Inc., and HR Magazine, and earlier in his career, he was recognized with a Best Business Blog award.
John now lives on Peaks Island in Maine with his wife of 30 years and their rescue dog, Lucy. When he’s not teaching or writing, he’s likely running in the fog, hiking coastal trails, or kayaking in Casco Bay.
POTENTIAL ADDONS WHEN YOU ENGAGE JOHN AS YOUR SPEAKER
- Copies of the book, Certain About Uncertainty
- Personalized UQ assessments. The UQ is a multi-page personal uncertainty intelligence report with dimension scores, sub-scores, strengths, development areas, and suggested next steps
- Customized industry/profession futures with guidance for how to create your own futures quickly
- Application workshops, pre-conference podcasts, post-conference webinars, one-on-one coaching
FOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT, ALL-HANDS MEETINGS & TEAM OFFSITES
Transform career paralysis into strategic action. Your team learns to navigate the six-month to three-year horizon where AI, industry shifts, and career disruption are already brewing.
“The tone is conversational without oversimplifying a complex topic… That’s a hard balance to strike, and Dr. Austin does it better than most.”
— Tim Duggan, PhD
FOR CONFERENCES, SALES MEETINGS & STRATEGIC PLANNING SESSIONS
Experience future-focused sessions unlike traditional scenario planning. Using Dr. Austin's uncertainty vectoring model combined with AI tools, participants co-create adaptable future maps customized to your organization...maps that can be updated quarterly as conditions shift. Which customers thrive in these futures? How does value creation change? Who are your competitors? These insights cascade through conversations for months after your event.
Revisit your custom futures at subsequent events. Allowing you to connect past insights to present decisions to future aspirations with minimal effort.
CUSTOMIZABLE & CASCADABLE
These highly interactive sessions work for intimate team meetings, department offsites, and thousand-person conferences. Dr. Austin helps you cascade messages throughout all organizational levels—from C-suite strategy to individual contributor skill-building.
COMMITMENT TO POSITIVE IMPACT
As a speaker focused on aspirational change, Dr. Austin commits 10% of speaker fees (after expenses) to nonprofit work. While we don't allow clients to specify recipients, we aim to support philanthropic aims aligned with your event or organization's values.
"I give everyone in the audience the skills to be confident in a chaotic world...to sense what's emerging, adapt strategically, and learn rapidly as the world shifts." —John Austin, PhD
John Austin brings together a unique mix of experiences to create high-energy, mindset-shifting talks. He brings his experience as a global strategist, professor and leadership coach, stage actor, entrepreneur, and award-winning researcher to everything he does.
NEW BOOK: Certain About Uncertainty: Build Resilience, Gain Confidence, and Thrive in a Chaotic World (Spring 2026). Ideal as an event giveaway, providing practical tools participants need long after your event ends.
In highly interactive sessions built from his book, Certain About Uncertainty, audiences learn three actionable capabilities:
- Anticipatory awareness to detect disruption before it's obvious and while they still have options
- Adaptability to evolve expertise as contexts change without abandoning professional identity
- Learning agility to rapidly acquire new capabilities across unfamiliar domains
Unlike generic "embrace change" keynotes, Dr. Austin provides specific frameworks audiences apply immediately: uncertainty vectoring for mapping complex decisions, techniques for distinguishing signal from noise, and methods for building capabilities that work across multiple possible futures.
ABOUT JOHN
John Austin is known for helping individuals and organizations build capability and confidence in uncertain environments.He serves as the dean of the Honors College and the P.D. Merrill Endowed Chair of Business at the University of New England, where his work sits at the intersection of management, psychology, and foresight. For more than two decades, he has supported leaders in industries where change is constant and the future is often unexpected.
A former professor of management at Penn State University, John left academia to launch a company—an experience that shaped his lifelong interest in how people adapt, learn, and make decisions when the path ahead is unclear. After selling the company, he served as a principal at Decision Strategies International, a global firm recognized for its pioneering work in scenario planning. In 2020, he returned to higher education to build and lead new academic initiatives at UNE, including launching both the College of Business and the Honors College. Today, he combines academic leadership with active teaching in executive education programs at the Wharton School, Penn State, Duke Corporate Education, and Georgetown University.
John holds a PhD in organization studies from Boston College and a BA in economics from Johns Hopkins University. His research has earned five Best Paper Awards and has been cited more than 2,700 times. John’s new book is Certain about Uncertainty: Build Resilience, Gain Confidence, and Thrive in a Chaotic World. He is also the author of Unquestioned Brilliance: Navigating a Fundamental Leadership Trap. His writing has appeared in Fast Company, Chief Executive, Inc., and HR Magazine, and earlier in his career, he was recognized with a Best Business Blog award.
John now lives on Peaks Island in Maine with his wife of 30 years and their rescue dog, Lucy. When he’s not teaching or writing, he’s likely running in the fog, hiking coastal trails, or kayaking in Casco Bay.
POTENTIAL ADDONS WHEN YOU ENGAGE JOHN AS YOUR SPEAKER
- Copies of the book, Certain About Uncertainty
- Personalized UQ assessments. The UQ is a multi-page personal uncertainty intelligence report with dimension scores, sub-scores, strengths, development areas, and suggested next steps
- Customized industry/profession futures with guidance for how to create your own futures quickly
- Application workshops, pre-conference podcasts, post-conference webinars, one-on-one coaching
FOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT, ALL-HANDS MEETINGS & TEAM OFFSITES
Transform career paralysis into strategic action. Your team learns to navigate the six-month to three-year horizon where AI, industry shifts, and career disruption are already brewing.
“The tone is conversational without oversimplifying a complex topic… That’s a hard balance to strike, and Dr. Austin does it better than most.”
— Tim Duggan, PhD
FOR CONFERENCES, SALES MEETINGS & STRATEGIC PLANNING SESSIONS
Experience future-focused sessions unlike traditional scenario planning. Using Dr. Austin's uncertainty vectoring model combined with AI tools, participants co-create adaptable future maps customized to your organization...maps that can be updated quarterly as conditions shift. Which customers thrive in these futures? How does value creation change? Who are your competitors? These insights cascade through conversations for months after your event.
Revisit your custom futures at subsequent events. Allowing you to connect past insights to present decisions to future aspirations with minimal effort.
CUSTOMIZABLE & CASCADABLE
These highly interactive sessions work for intimate team meetings, department offsites, and thousand-person conferences. Dr. Austin helps you cascade messages throughout all organizational levels—from C-suite strategy to individual contributor skill-building.
COMMITMENT TO POSITIVE IMPACT
As a speaker focused on aspirational change, Dr. Austin commits 10% of speaker fees (after expenses) to nonprofit work. While we don't allow clients to specify recipients, we aim to support philanthropic aims aligned with your event or organization's values.
Reclaiming Wonder: How to Thrive When the Future Won't Hold Still
TARGET AUDIENCE: Mixed audiences at conferences, annual meetings, all-hands events, association gatherings...anyone seeking inspiration and renewed confidence in uncertain times
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:
Remember when you were eight years old and uncertainty meant possibility? When you built snow forts not knowing if they'd collapse, explored forests without maps, and tried new things just to see what would happen? You had something...
The Success Penalty: Why Your Best People Feel Most Vulnerable
TARGET AUDIENCE: Mid-career professionals, individual contributors, managers (5-20 years experience)
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: Your accomplished professionals are experiencing a paradox: the expertise that earned promotions now feels like a cage. This session reveals why success in predictable environments creates vulnerability in uncertain ones and provides a clear framework for evolving expertise without abandoning professional identity....
From Prediction to Preparation: Strategic Foresight for Leadership Teams
TARGET AUDIENCE: C-suite executives, senior leadership teams, board members
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: Traditional strategic planning assumes you can predict what's coming. But when a majority of jobs face technological displacement and industries transform in 18-month cycles, prediction fails. This executive session introduces uncertainty vectoring: a dynamic alternative to scenario planning that maps how multiple uncertainties interact and...
Situated Expertise: Building Teams That Thrive in Chaos
TARGET AUDIENCE: Department heads, project managers, team leaders managing cross-functional groups
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: Individual uncertainty intelligence isn't enough...teams must navigate ambiguity collectively. But most teams fragment under pressure: engineers retreat to technical solutions, marketers default to customer data, finance focuses on cost models. No one synthesizes perspectives. This session teaches prospective...
Future-Proofing Your Workforce: Building Organizational Learning Agility
TARGET AUDIENCE: business unit leaders, Talent Development leaders, HR teams, OD professionals
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: Your L&D strategy assumes you know which skills employees will need. But when job requirements shift every 18 months, skill-stacking doesn't work. This session reframes workforce development around meta-capabilities: anticipatory awareness, strategic adaptability, and learning agility. Participants redesign talent systems to build...
Reading the Market Before It Moves: Anticipatory Awareness for Revenue Teams
TARGET AUDIENCE: Sales leaders, account executives, business development teams, customer success managers
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: Your best salespeople don't just respond to client requests, they anticipate needs before clients articulate them. This session systematizes that intuition. Participants learn to detect weak signals in customer conversations, identify when client problems are shifting beneath surface requests, and position...
9 recommend John
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Westfield Insurance
Virtual
G.O., Learning & Development Professional, Westfield Insurance
Dr. Austin’s expertise and perspective were tremendously valuable, and his ability to engage and connect with the participants made the session truly remarkable. We appreciate the time and effort John put into making the session a success.
VG Global Network Inc.
On-Site
M.T., Coordinator/Director, VG Global Network Inc.
Verified @iccpc.caJohn's professionalism, knowledge, and engaging presentation style makes him a standout presenter, and I would not hesitate to recommend him to colleagues and peers in need of his services.
Udemy Business
On-Site
H.S., Senior Expert Network Manager, Udemy Business
Verified @udemy.comJohn is that rare partner who brings deep knowledge, extensive experience, and powerhouse credentials, all wrapped up in a persona that is personable, positive and present. When John commits to a project you know he will be reliably prepared, and yet able to adapt at a moment's notice if needed. My organization works with a multitude of experts in corporate strategy, change management and leadership development, giving them a front row seat to our customers and their concerns - which is an honor and a challenge. Consistently we receive feedback from our session participants that John is "fantastic", "engaging", "thoughtful" and "easy to talk with". Two techniques that John has mastered are to 1) explain complex concepts easily and clearly so that everyone understands, and b) gently ask questions to help reshape learners' thinking, making an impact and adding value. I am giving John an A+ but only on the condition that he continues to devote some of his valuable time to working with us haha!
Penn State University
Virtual
A.G., Associate Professor of Leadership Communication, Penn State University
Verified @psu.eduI write with high praise of Dr. John Austin as a dynamic leader and facilitator of leadership training and consulting. I have known Dr. Austin for over 15 years. In recent years, I have asked John to be a member of a five-person team to provide virtual training on “Strategic Communication for Leaders” through the Smeal College of Business at The Pennsylvania State University. John strikes a fantastic balance of authority and approachability. He is one of the best at finding the right equilibrium among instruction, activities, and facilitated discussion. Professor Austin’s ratings, as provided by the participants at the conclusion of the three days of training, are consistently the highest of all the members of the five-person team.
Momentus Technologies
Virtual
M.S., Vice President of Professional Services, Momentus Technologies
Verified @gomomentus.comHaving had the privilege of working with Dr. Austin as an expert facilitator, I wholeheartedly recommend him. Dr. Austin is not just an author and speaker; he is a high-energy force that challenges audiences to perceive opportunities in uncertainty. His ability to customize strategic foresight for any audience sets him apart. Dr. Austin's expertise in Change Leadership at the Executive Level is evident in his engaging presentations that inspire and motivate leaders to embrace change as a catalyst for growth. His strategic planning skills are second to none, offering a roadmap for organizations to not only adapt but thrive in dynamic environments. Dr. Austin is a dynamic and knowledgeable facilitator with a unique ability to communicate complex concepts in an accessible manner. I highly recommend him for anyone seeking a speaker, author, or facilitator with a deep understanding of Future Business Trends, Change Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Decision Making at the executive level.
BAH
Virtual
J.D., Lead Associate, BAH
John’s approach was very effective, both delivery and retention. Perfectly chosen case - thoroughly enjoyable, educational, and interactive.
Institute for Management Studies
On-Site
M.H., Chair, IMS Columbus, Institute for Management Studies
Verified @maryheldandassociates.comDr. John Austin is a polished, dynamic and highly-rated speaker for the Institute for Management Studies whose program "Critical Thinking" offered eye-opening and practical insights into the dynamics of decision-making for issues that involve significant uncertainty. As a result of attending his program, our attendees were able to practice and apply the skills and strategies they learned to the complex problems they face to help them make the best decisions possible.
Barbara Boldt Global Communications
On-Site
B.B., Owner, Barbara Boldt Global Communications
John's talk on developing strategic leaders was interesting and insightful. His message was presented clearly and he created great energy in the room by making the session interactive and engaging. I was left with several key take-aways, some that I could apply personally and some that I could share with my team.
VC Global Network Inc.
On-Site
M.N., Event Coordinator, VC Global Network Inc.
Verified @iccpc.caJohn's professionalism, knowledge, and engaging presentation style makes him a standout presenter, and I would not hesitate to recommend him to colleagues and peers in need of his services.
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