2026 Speakers

Kelly Jahner-Byrne

Global Speaker, Executive Coach and Connector, Entrepreneur

Momentum: The Moment You Decide

What if the secret to moving forward isn’t motivation, talent, or timing, but a single decision? In this reflective and empowering talk, explore the quiet force that shapes our lives more than motivation or confidence: momentum. Through candid stories a reveal for how momentum doesn’t wait for us to feel ready - it begins the moment we decide. Blending lived experience with insights from psychology, this talk reframes progress as a series of small, intentional actions that build belief, restore energy, and change direction. The talk invites the audience to examine where their own momentum is headed and reminds us that even the smallest decision can be the start of meaningful change.

Favorite Quote: “It’s All Good!”

Key Life Achievement: Woodbury, Minnesota - Business Owner of the Year

Fun Fact: She sang the National Anthem for the Minnesota Wild Hockey Team, the only person outside of the Wild designated performer!

Enrique Velázquez

People-First Leader and Coach

What Happens When Leaders Put People First

We’re taught to chase metrics - profit, performance, perception - but those are just the fruit of something deeper: how we treat people. This talk explores what happens when leaders, at every level, prioritize people over “X” and focus first on those doing the work and those they serve. Part story, part data, it invites you to rethink leadership as a people-first practice that creates psychological safety, belonging, and better results.

Favorite Quote: “Anytime you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don’t, then you are wasting your time on Earth.” - Roberto Clemente

Key Life Achievement: Five years and nearly 300 medical appointments after surviving a nearly fatal car accident, he reclaimed his life and reignited the passion to do what he was meant to do: write, speak, and lead others.

Fun Fact: He's lived in many countries and enjoyed immersive cultural experiences everywhere he went - as a child and as an adult. This shaped his world view about people and what motivates them.

Ted Stephany

Speaker and Negotiation Strategist

Small Fights, Big Life: The Power of a Courageous Ask

This talk reveals how our genetic instinct to avoid conflict, once essential for survival, is now the hidden barrier to our careers, relationships, and growth. By redefining conflict, this talk shows how tiny, daily micro-negotiations create massive momentum. Blending research, storytelling, and practical examples to demonstrate why we underestimate our influence and how to reclaim it. Audiences leave with a simple, yet transformative call to action: to choose courage over comfort.

Favorite Quote: “Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms, you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.” - Seneca

Key Life Achievement: Somehow, he fooled an amazingly smart and beautiful woman into marrying him and starting a family together.

Fun Fact: He lost all of his hair BEFORE having children.

Bree Johnson

Executive Unschool Founder and Work Recovery Catalyst

Recovering From Work: The Leadership Revolutions We’ve Been Missing

What if the stress you carry home from work isn’t a personal failure, but an unhealed hidden wound? This talk reveals what years on the front lines of workplace conflict taught her and why so many leaders break under pressure: that modern work quietly harms us in ways we rarely name and almost never recover from. Blending science, lived experience, and practical tools, she introduces a new model of leadership centered on recovery, not endurance, to regulate, rewire, and reclaim your wellbeing before real harm occurs. This talk is for anyone who’s wondered why “pushing through” keeps making things worse and what to do instead.

Favorite Quote: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” - Maya Angelou

Key Life Achievement: Of all her accomplishments and accolades, she's most proud of her two young boys and the thoughtful, kind, and considerate young men they are becoming.

Fun Fact: For nearly 40 years, her entire extended family spends time on the Minnesota North Shore at Split Rock Cabins for one long weekend in September, a tradition so beloved they rent nearly all of the rustic cabins each year with their growing families.

Laila Miller

Global Speaker, Author, and Business Leader

Self-Worth Isn’t A Feeling. It’s A Decision.

Most of us believe self-worth is something we feel until life takes away the very things we depend on to feel worthy. In this powerful talk, a journey of loss, heartbreak, and a life-threatening diagnosis led to discovery that self-worth isn’t something you feel, it’s something you choose. Drawing on personal stories, research, and practical strategies, the audience will learn how to reclaim identity, rise after devastation, and embrace the courage to choose yourself regardless of circumstances.

Favorite Quote: “Kindness is the language the blind can see and the deaf can hear” - Mark Twain

Key Life Achievement: She rebuilt her life, raised an extraordinary son, wrote two bestselling books, and co-founded a women’s outreach with her sister. And today, she's more fulfilled and successful than she was before everything fell apart.

Fun Fact: She's a foodie, and judges vacations by the local food scene, not the hotel!

Melissa Fors Shackelford

Purpose-Driven Marketing Advisor

How to Make Purpose Your Lifeline When Life Gets Hard

How knowing and living your purpose can keep you grounded through loss, burnout, and change. In this steady and deeply human talk, this idea explores why purpose is not something we chase when life is working, but something we lean on when it is not. What it offers is something solid to hold onto when everything else feels uncertain. Through personal storytelling, research, and real-world leadership experience, the talk reframes purpose as practical and human. Through stories of loss, recovery, leadership, and empathy in action, the talk shows how purpose becomes an anchor that helps us stay steady when life feels overwhelming.

Favorite Quote: “I try to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great conceits. When brimming with gratitude, one’s heartbeat must surely result in outgoing love, the finest emotion that we can ever know” - The Grapevine 1962

Key Life Achievement: Writing her book called Harnessing Purpose: A Marketer’s Guide to Inspiring Connection was on her bucket list and she's so proud of the warm welcome it’s received.

Fun Fact: She lived in Japan for 3 years and still takes Japanese class once a week!

Daud Khan

Healthcare Systems Engineer and Speaker

From Breakdown to Breakthrough: Redesigning Yourself When Life Fails

In this inspiring talk, follow a personal crisis into a lesson of resilience and self-design. Faced with cultural adjustment, unexpected challenges, and the loneliness of starting life on your own, the idea discovers that the most complex system to engineer isn’t a machine; it’s yourself - through Inner Engineering. The talk shares how observing failure, embracing uncertainty, and iteratively redesigning a mindset allows you not just to survive, but to thrive. The talk shows how we can rebuild ourselves after life’s breakdowns and in the process, create systems that empower not only ourselves, but others around us.

Favorite Quote: “If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it – then i can achieve it.” - Muhammad Ali

Key Life Achievement: Hosting Tech Talk, his first TV Show, was a personal milestone.

Fun Fact: Social anxiety? Never heard of her, especially when friends are around.

Kimberly Harms, D.D.S., CGC

Author, Speaker, Legacy Educator, Emotional Wealth Builder

We’re Not Dead Yet:
How Aging Boldly Can Change the World We Leave Behind

 In this unforgettable, life-giving talk, the idea blends humor, wisdom, and courageous honesty to reframe aging as our most powerful season and most important calling. Drawing from a story shaped by resilience, deep loss, and fierce reinvention, the talk equips the audience members from every generation to live boldly, prepare wisely, and pass on a legacy of emotional wealth that strengthens families long after we are gone.

Favorite Quote: “And younger adults listen up. Someday, you will be aged too. Or you will die early. Take your pick. It’s one or the other!” - Kimberly Harms

Key Life Achievement: Reinventing herself after the loss of her mother and son to suicide, the loss of her husband from a broken heart, and the loss of her career as a dentist due to nerve damage in her hand.

Fun Fact: She's a Minnesota State Fair Blue Ribbon Porcelain Painting Winner.

Ryan T. Reichert

Best Selling Author, Speaker, and Coach

Kindness: The 6-Step Method to Transform Our Lives

In this moving and practical talk, the idea challenges us to rethink kindness - not as a personality trait, but as a daily practice anyone can learn. Drawing from experience to create a simple six-step method that transforms ordinary moments into opportunities for connection. Through powerful personal stories and quiet insights, the audience learns how small acts - often lasting only seconds - can interrupt isolation, repair relationships, and sometimes even save lives. This talk invites the audience to see kindness as a repeatable habit, one that strengthens mental health, builds resilience, and reminds us that presence, not perfection, is where real change begins. 

Favorite Quote: “When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don’t, they don’t” - William Temple

Key Life Achievement: He spent 23 years in U.S. Army, retired as a LTC in the Infantry as an Airborne Ranger with 4-Combat Deployment.

Fun Fact: He played Rugby for the University of North Dakota.

Heather Poduska

Operatic Diva and Star-Maker For Women Who Want To Stand Out

Developing A Diva Mindset:
How To Go From Stuck & Stymied To Unstoppable In The Spotlight

In this dynamic and playful talk, the idea shares how anyone can go from stuck and stymied to iconically unstoppable. Many people delay their dreams and downplay their greatness. As a result, they rarely reach their full superstar potential. It’s time to flip the script and give the audience the tools and support needed to unlock the magnetic authority of their true voice. With the signature DIVA method, this talk shows dream-seekers how to stop pumping the brakes and step into the spotlight with confidence.

Favorite Quote: “The slowest person in the race is still faster than the critic on the sidelines.”

Key Life Achievement: As the creator and host of the “The Diva Life Show", she has had the privilege of interviewing many incredible industry leaders such as highly accomplished musicians, award-winning entrepreneurs, international beauty experts, and fashion designers including one of the top fashion designers of the Czech Republic who styled the First Lady of the Czech Republic. However, her greatest life achievement is raising kind, compassionate, responsible children who are now amazing young adults.

Fun Fact: She likes to dance at the grocery store.

Dayna Del Val

Founder and CEO

THE POWER OF SILENCE: HOW DISRUPTION FUELS TRANSFORMATION

In a world overflowing with noise, distraction and constant “doing,” we rarely pause long enough to hear ourselves. This talk shares a deeply personal story to confront discomfort, silence, and stillness. Intentional disruption can unlock clarity, creativity, and personal transformation. The idea introduces The Silence to Spark Framework - a simple, actionable approach to creating intentional pauses, embracing stillness, and letting your inner Spark guide the next chapter of your life. The audience learns how small, deliberate interruptions in daily rhythm can ignite profound insight, innovation, and change.

Favorite Quote: “If not now, when?”- Hillel the Elder

Key Life Achievement: She's a SAG-AFTRA union actor

Fun Fact: She loves to cook and bake, making as many things homemade as she possibly can, including all her families yogurt, bread, nut butters, ice cream, jam, and granola.

Lucie Amundsen

Locally Laid Egg Company Marketing Chick

From Date Night to Doing Right:
Accidentally Building an Ethical Egg Business

 What begins as a lighthearted date-night conversation quickly turns into an unexpected leap into the world of agriculture. With humor, honesty, and a fair amount of chaos, this talk traces how two non-farmers accidentally founded the first pasture-raised egg company in the Upper Midwest - and uncovered a broken system along the way. This is a story about questioning the rules, redesigning systems, and discovering that real change often starts with saying yes to an idea that feels wildly unreasonable. 

Favorite Quote: "Experience, you just can’t Google that” - Lucie's Brother In Law

Key Life Achievement: Her book about Locally Laid, published by an imprint of Penguin and won the Midwest Independent Booksellers Award in 2016.

Fun Fact: In the section of her heart reserved for stout entrepreneurism sits a shirking pinto bean or maybe an eraser head.

Andrew Mazz Marry, Ph.D.

Professor of Biosciences and Chair for School of Sciences

Breath, Honesty, Courage: A New Model of Leadership

This talk traces a journey from a near-fatal health crisis and a medically induced coma to nine years of sobriety and transformative leadership. Through three principles that sustain recovery – take a breath, shift your perspective, and practice radical self-honesty. The audience learns how the tools that save lives can also reshape the way we lead, connect, and rebuild trust. 

Favorite Quote: “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future”. - Oscar Wilde

Key Life Achievement: He is a happy, smiling alcoholic – living in sobriety since February 1st, 2017.

Fun Fact: He arrived in Fargo, North Dakota January 2001 for a post doctoral position. While the research was compelling, he actually said yes because of his sentimentality and love for John Wayne western movies. He was in the wild, wild West!

Adam Lane Smith

The Attachment Specialist

Building Secure Loyalty in the Workplace

Discover why most workplace loyalty is a deception, driven by dopamine hits that evaporate under stress. Most standard management tactics neurologically train employees to see leadership as a threat. This talk uncovers the Secure Loyalty Equation - a neurological formula that brings secure attachment to work. By implementing these bio-loyalty principles, leaders can build teams wired for trust rather than dependency, turning temporary motivation into long-term commitment.

Favorite Quote: “Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is. And you must bend to its power or live a lie.” - Miyamoto Musashi

Key Life Achievement: Raising 6 children with his wife of 17 years and founding the Attachment Institute to teach families everywhere how to love each other again.

Fun Fact: His favorite place to visit is the ocean. Any ocean, anywhere.

Katie Mednick

Tech Visionary and Founder

The Shove Move: How values - not appearances - define progress.

What if what looks like a step backward… is actually the move that propels us forward? In this inspiring talk, see how real progress isn’t about appearances – it’s about where we put the power. Drawing from experience building software in a legacy industry, the idea reframes failure, risk, and leadership through the lens of railroad wisdom. With vivid storytelling and sharp insight, the audience learns how values - not fear - define true authority, and why the long game of trust is the only track worth laying.

Favorite Quote: “We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking” - Richard Rohr

Key Life Achievement: Founder & Former CEO of Spark TS (acquired by RailCube, January 2025): Built Spark TS - including the safety and compliance platform Rail Tasker™ - into a leading rail technology company serving railroad clients across North America before its strategic acquisition by global software vendor RailCube. 2023 Railway Age Women in Rail Honoree: Recognized for leadership, innovation, and community impact in the railroad industry.

Fun Fact: She's got married 8 days after she presented at the 2026 TEDxDuluth.