Keynote Speaker

Salim Ismail

Co-founder of
Singularity University

Salim is the best-selling author of Exponential Organizations, a sought-after business strategist, and a serial entrepreneur, having founded technology companies including Confabb, PubSub Concepts, and Ångströ, which was acquired by Google in 2010. He led Brickhouse, Yahoo!’s internal incubator, and was recently named an XPRIZE Foundation Board member. Salim is also Founding Executive Director of Singularity University; Co-Founder and Chairman of OpenExO; Chairman of ExO Works; Co-Founder and board of Fastrack Institute; Board member of Rokk3r Inc.; an Aion Advisory Board member; and General Partner of Rokk3r Fuel ExO Venture Fund.

Exponential Organizations reached No. 1 on Amazon’s “Best-Sellers in Business Management,” and was named Frost & Sullivan’s “Growth, Innovation and Leadership Book of the Year.” Following this success, Salim co-founded OpenExO and partner ExO Works to transform global business by catapulting organizations into the world of exponential thinking. He created a methodology (the ExO Sprint) to help businesses and organizations achieve 10x performance. ExO Works counts numerous global, Fortune 1000 companies as sprint clients, with more coming in the first quarter of 2019.

OpenExO is a global transformation ecosystem that connects world-class professionals with organizations, institutions and people who want to be transformed for the future through cutting-edge ideas and methodologies (e.g. Exponential Organizations). The consulting ecosystem consists of over 155 certified coaches and advisors from 29 countries speaking 24 different languages.

In fall 2018, Salim co-authored and released his second book, Exponential Transformation, which open sources the ExO Sprint methodology.

In addition, Salim has been the Chairman of Fastrack Institute since 2016. This non-profit organization works to accelerate technology into society by finding holistic approaches to solving problems, by using Exponential Organizations methodology with a focus on large urban centres.

Salim is a prolific speaker, having given more than 150 talks in 2017 and 2018 to audiences of all sizes in 12 different countries. He has been profiled across a vast array of media outlets, including The New York Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes, WIRED, Vogue, and the BBC.