Keynote Speakers – 2025 NBAA Leadership Conference

Visionaries, game-changers and leaders. Don’t miss these dynamic keynote speakers at the 2025 NBAA Leadership Conference.

Tuesday, Jan 28

Charles Duhigg

Pulitzer Prize-winning Reporter and Best-Selling Author

Charles Duhigg is the bestselling author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, which explores the science of habit formation in our lives, companies and societies.

His newest book, Supercommunicators: The Power of Conversation and Hidden Language of Connection, delivers a simple but powerful lesson: With the right tools, we can connect with anyone.

His book Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business is a fascinating exploration of the science of productivity, and why, in today’s world, managing how you think – rather than what you think – can transform your life.

Duhigg’s presentations are both descriptive and prescriptive, and speak to a wide range of groups from the fields of science, medicine, business and education.

Duhigg is a Pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times Magazine. A former writer for The New York Times business section as well, he has authored or contributed to multiple series, including “The Reckoning” (2008), which studied the causes and outcomes of the financial crisis, and “The iEconomy”, which examined the global economy through the lens of Apple, and which won the 2013 Pulitzer prize in explanatory journalism. He has also won the George Polk Award (2007), the Gerald Loeb Award (2008), the National Journalism Award (2009), was a Business News Visionary Award recipient (2020-2021), and other honors.

Currently, Duhigg writes for The New Yorker and hosts the “How To!” podcast for Slate Magazine. In addition to his reporting, Charles Duhigg is a regular contributor to television and radio, including the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Frontline, Dr. Oz and various programs on CNBC and NPR.

Before becoming a journalist, Duhigg worked in private equity and founded a health care company in his home state of New Mexico (and, for one terrifying day in 1999, was a bike messenger in San Francisco.)

He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and Yale College.

8:50 a.m. – 9:50 a.m.
Supercommunicators: The Science of Conversation and Connection

Linda Galindo

Creator, Best-Selling Organizational Culture Changing Programs: Accountability That Works! and The Accountability Experience, and Author, The 85% Solution

Linda Galindo is a fierce advocate for personal accountability. She wants to create a world in which everyone, regardless of circumstances or position, is accountable for their results. Galindo’s mission is to help others to find the courage to see, hear and tell their own truth so they can live fully accountable lives.

After years as a radio news personality and journalist covering government and business, Galindo was fed up covering stories focused on a lack of accountability. She left journalism and decided to do something about it.

Galindo delivers speeches and works directly with leaders and their teams to create accountable organizations. Her clients include some of the world’s most notable corporations, health care systems, government entities and educational institutions, as well as entrepreneurial companies and non-profits.

Galindo serves on the faculty of the Institute for Management Studies and the University of Dayton Center for Leadership. Her current community board service includes Abundant Grace Coastside Worker and Coastal Repertory Theater.
She was a founding member of the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy’s (NASBA) Center for the Public Trust and served on its board for six years. She is also a past executive board member for the United Way of the Greater Salt Lake Area.

Galindo is the author of several books and creator of accountability programs and tools:

• The 85% Solution: How Personal Accountability Guarantees Success – No nonsense, no excuses
• Way to Grow: Cultivating the Weeds, Daisies and Orchids in Your Organization
• Where Winners Live: Sell More, Earn More, Achieve More Through Personal Accountability
• The Accountability Experience and Accountability That Works!
• Mindset of Accountability Assessment

10:40 a.m. – 11:40 a.m.
Everyone Owns the Result: Instilling Accountability from Top to Bottom

Sylvia Baffour

Emotional Intelligence Coach, Trainer and Author, I Dare You to Care

Sylvia Baffour is a sought-after executive coach, professional speaker and author who’s been recognized by HubSpot among the Top 15 female speakers, alongside the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Mel Robbins.

With the distinct advantage of living in eight countries and fluency in five languages, Baffour brings a rich, global perspective to audiences around the world, bridging diverse viewpoints with ease.

For nearly two decades, she’s empowered individuals and organizations to foster thriving, emotionally intelligent workplaces through her signature Dare to Care™ Framework. From industry giants like Whirlpool and Lockheed Martin to global institutions such as the World Bank and Doctors Without Borders, her clients repeatedly turn to her for actionable, transformative insights.

Baffour’s book, I Dare You to Care, guides readers on leveraging emotional intelligence to inspire and influence others for exceptional growth and meaningful connections.

1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Dare to Care™: How Leaders Inspire and Influence with Emotional Intelligence

Bill Benjamin

Emotional Intelligence, Performance and Leadership Expert

Engaging and dynamic… you’d never know he is a math and computer guy.

Bill Benjamin has a rare perspective – he has advanced degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science and has 25 years of real-world business experience as a senior leader. He is very genuine about the fact that he struggled early in his career as a leader when he was under pressure. In his programs he shares how he has been able to apply the same techniques he teaches to become a better leader and create a high-performing culture on the teams he leads – and how you can too.

In addition to using his background in sales to motivate and inspire audiences, Benjamin leverages his mathematics and technical background to take a practical and scientific approach to helping people understand how the brain responds under pressure, and how that can help increase leadership and performance.

Benjamin is a partner at the Institute for Health and Human Potential (IHHP), a successful international research and culture change company, named one of the “Fastest Growing Companies” in the “Fast 100” ranking in PROFIT Magazine.  IHHP’s Last 8% Culture System helps organizations create high-performance cultures that are both high-care and high-accountability.

The combination of Benjamin’s practical nature and scientific approach to leadership make him a hit with analytical audiences. His high energy level and enthusiasm has resulted in a successful track record with discerning audiences that include surgeons, U.S Marines and NASA engineers.

3:25 p.m. – 4:25 p.m.
Building a High-Performance, Last 8% Culture

Wednesday, Jan 29

Bruce Tulgan

Best-Selling Author and Expert on Workforce Demographics

Bruce Tulgan is internationally recognized as the leading expert on young people in the workplace and one of the leading experts on leadership and management. He is a bestselling author, an adviser to business leaders all over the world, and a sought-after keynote speaker and management trainer.

Since 1995, Tulgan has worked with tens of thousands of leaders and managers in hundreds of organizations ranging from Aetna to WalMart; from the Army to the YMCA. In recent years, Tulgan was named by Management Today as one of the few contemporary figures to stand out as a “management guru” and he was named to the 2009 Thinkers50 Rising Star list.

In 2009, Tulgan received Toastmasters International’s most prestigious honor, the Golden Gavel. This honor is annually presented to a single person who represents excellence in the fields of communication and leadership. Past winners have included Stephen Covey, Zig Ziglar, Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, Ken Blanchard, Tom Peters, Art Linkletter, Dr. Joyce Brothers and Walter Cronkite.

Tulgan is the author or co-author of 21 books, including his best-selling It’s Okay to Be the Boss, the classic Managing Generation X, and his popular Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Bring Out the Best in Young Talent. His newest book, The Art of Being Indispensable at Work, is available now from Harvard Business Review Press.

Tulgan lectures at the Yale Graduate School of Management, as well as other academic institutions, and his writing appears regularly in human resources, staffing and management journals, including regular columns in Training Magazine, Forbes.com and Psychology Today.

Before founding RainmakerThinking in 1993, Tulgan practiced law at the Wall Street firm of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn. He graduated with high honors from Amherst College, received his law degree from the New York University School of Law, and is still a member of the Bar in Massachusetts and New York.

Tulgan continues his lifelong study of Okinawan Uechi Ryu Karate Do and holds a seventh degree black belt, making him a Kyoshi master of the style. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife Debby Applegate, Ph.D., who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for her book The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (Doubleday, 2006).

9:40 a.m. – 10:40 a.m.
The Great Generational Shift – The Workforce is Changing, Ready for It?

Craig Zablocki

Former Teacher and Nationally Recognized Speaker

Making a profound difference for over 30 years, Craig Zablocki has spoken to 1.5 million people internationally and in all 50 states, across industries that include all branches of the military, hundreds of education groups, as well as healthcare associations and organizations, Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, child advocacy organizations, federal prison workers, Realtors, surgeons, potato farmers, and numerous national franchises.

His impact within the aviation industry has spanned decades, with clients including Duncan Aviation, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Denver International Airport.

Zablocki finds that we humans get stuck and need help to get unstuck. So, he takes his keen observation of human behavior and simple, practical wisdom and distills it through his lion-hearted passion, his highly interactive style and his spontaneous positive humor.

Zablocki finds that world-class organizations want to be challenged, to be called into their authenticity, to take their task seriously and themselves lightly. Zablocki serves as a catalyst for change, helping organizations that want a culture of fun, are open to creative innovation, and don’t want to ride on their laurels.

Zablocki was an inner-city teacher prior to speaking and was the first outside speaker invited to address the students at Columbine after the 1999 tragedy. He was voted twice in the top 2% of the best 150 speakers in the U.S. by the National Society of Human Resource Managers.

1:45 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
Radical Leadership