Ali Ahmadi

Ali Ahmadi's Biography

Known for his natural storytelling ability, Ali Ahmadi uses his experiences as a refugee to deliver impactful messages about resilience, diversity, and the power of embracing individual stories.

At 17, Ali Ahmadi was smuggled out of Iran with no guarantee that he would survive the journey. What followed was a series of extraordinary life events that would take him from uncertainty and displacement to becoming an engineer, board director and award-winning keynote speaker who has addressed more than 75,000 people worldwide.

Alongside his journey as a refugee, Ali has built a career in engineering and senior leadership, working within complex organisations and leading people, projects and programs worth more than four billion dollars. He still holds a senior leadership role today, which means he has experienced firsthand the realities leaders and teams face: navigating uncertainty, maintaining performance through change, building engagement, dealing with pressure and finding direction when the path forward is not always clear.

His contribution to engineering and leadership has been recognised through a number of industry honours, including Water Services Association of Australia's Young Utility Leader, Engineers Australia's 40 Under 40 and the Department of the Premier and Cabinet's Force Forty. This combination of technical thinking, leadership experience and lived experience gives Ali an unusual ability to understand organisational challenges from both a human and professional perspective.

It is this intersection that sits at the heart of his keynotes.

Ali explores resilience, leadership, change and burnout not as abstract concepts, but as challenges he has personally experienced from very different perspectives. Whether reflecting on moments when his survival depended on the decisions he made, the process of rebuilding his life in a new country, or the challenges of leading people and delivering outcomes within complex organisations, he turns experience into ideas audiences can apply to their own circumstances.

A TEDx and award-winning speaker, Ali has been recognised as Impromptu Speaker of the Year and is a recipient of the Professional Speakers Australia Emerging Speaker (Kerrie Nairn) Scholarship. He is known for making complex ideas feel simple and deeply human, and for building connection with an audience quickly.

Ali does not simply tell audiences what resilience, leadership or change should look like. He invites them into stories and experiences that allow them to see those ideas differently for themselves, moving between powerful personal storytelling, humour and practical insight. For organisations, this means audiences leave not just moved, but challenged to reconsider how they respond to adversity, lead themselves and others, and create the conditions for people to perform at their best.

From being smuggled across borders as a teenager to standing on stages around the world, Ali's life has required him to repeatedly navigate circumstances for which there was no clear map. Today, he uses those experiences, together with his career in engineering and leadership, to help others navigate theirs.

Contact Helene Greenham directly for Ali Ahmedi speaking enquiries – helene@platinumspeakers.com.au

Speaking Topics Include

The Map Forward

How to build the clarity, resilience and confidence to perform through uncertainty.

Given the uncertainty organisations face, they need people who can adapt, make confident decisions and continue performing when the path ahead is unclear.

The Map Forward equips audiences with the mindset and practical strategies to navigate uncertainty, build confidence and maintain high performance regardless of the challenges they face.

Drawing on his experience as a refugee, his leadership background and his work as a dynamic speaker, Ali helps leaders and teams build the resilience, clarity and connection needed to navigate uncertainty. Through powerful stories and practical insights, he equips audiences to respond to challenges more effectively, strengthen engagement and turn adversity into momentum.

Audiences will leave with a simple, practical framework they can use immediately to remain grounded, find direction and keep moving forward through uncertainty.

Audience Takeaways

• Use gratitude to maintain perspective and remain grounded under pressure.
• Create direction through purpose when circumstances are changing.
• Build the self-confidence to act before the entire path is clear.

Map for Change

How to prepare people for change, navigate transition and accelerate adoption.

Change strategies often focus on systems, timelines and communication while underestimating the human transition required for people to adopt a new reality. When people are not prepared for what lies ahead, the emotional experience of constant adaptation can bring a sense of disorientation.

Drawing on his lived experience as a refugee, his career as an engineer and director, and insights from behavioural science, Ali uses compelling storytelling to introduce a deeply human framework for navigating change.

Through three stages—realisation, transition and adoption—Ali helps audiences understand how to make sense of disruption, move through uncertainty and adapt to a new reality with greater clarity, resilience and intention.

This keynote is more than a talk on change. It is a memorable experience that leaves audience members with a practical three-stage framework for moving through change with clarity, confidence and ownership.

Audience Takeaways

• Recognise the early signals of change and understand what is shifting.
• Navigate the uncertainty of transition with greater clarity and resilience.
• Adopt new environments and ways of working with confidence and ownership

The Leadership Map

How to simplify leadership, reduce overload and build engaged, empowered teams.

As knowledge becomes more accessible, leadership is becoming less about knowledge and more about creating clarity, building trust and enabling others to succeed. However, leadership expectations have expanded to the point that many leaders are overloaded, disengaged and uncertain about where to focus their attention.

Drawing on established leadership and behavioural research, together with more than a decade of experience leading large teams, Ali cuts through the complexity by returning to three fundamentals of effective leadership that address employees' core needs: appreciation, direction and empowerment.

Leaders will leave with a simple, practical compass for leading through appreciation, direction and empowerment, creating greater clarity, trust and ownership across their teams.

Audience Takeaways

• Use appreciation as a deliberate tool for strengthening engagement and performance.
• Set clear direction that connects individual roles, team priorities and organisational purpose.
• Build trust and capability so people can act with confidence and ownership.

Hosing Down Burnout

How to address the hidden drivers of burnout to sustain energy, focus and performance

Burnout is one of the biggest challenges facing modern workplaces, yet it is often misunderstood and treated as a workload problem alone. This narrow view can leave organisations addressing the symptoms while the deeper causes continue to affect energy, engagement and performance.

Hosing Down Burnout offers a fresh and deeply human perspective: burnout is not just about workload, but about how we work, how we live, and who we become under pressure.

Hosing Down Burnout helps audiences understand how patterns in the way we work, the way we live and the way we respond under pressure can combine to create unsustainable performance.

Combining engineering thinking, behavioural science and lived experience, Ali explores the patterns that drive people into survival mode and keep them there. With a blend of powerful storytelling and practical insight, he helps audiences rethink burnout at its roots and build a more sustainable way of working, living and showing up.

Audience members will leave with a practical toolkit for recognising burnout risk early, protecting their energy and sustaining performance over time.

Audience Takeaways

• Identify work patterns that quietly increase the risk of burnout.
• Understand how recovery, lifestyle and daily rhythms shape sustainable performance.
• Recognise personal patterns under pressure and respond with greater awareness and self-leadership.

The Re-engagement Map

How to rebuild ownership, motivation and performance from the inside out.

Disengagement is rarely solved by another perk, program or promise. Sustainable engagement begins when people reconnect with what matters to them and understand how their contribution connects to the direction of the organisation.

The Re-engagement Map provides employees with a practical, inside-out framework for rebuilding motivation, personal ownership and meaningful contribution. Drawing on behavioural science research, leadership experience and storytelling, Ali helps audiences appreciate where they are, clarify where they want to go and build the confidence to move forward.

The result is engagement that is more personal, sustainable and connected to performance.

Audiences will leave with a clear, practical way to rebuild engagement from the inside out, strengthening personal ownership, sustainable motivation and connection to organisational goals.

Audience Takeaways

• Why disengagement develops and the early signs individuals and leaders can recognise.
• How purpose, confidence and recognition rebuild ownership at work.
• How everyday leadership and team practices can turn short-term motivation into sustainable engagement.