Why I'm Taking "The Human Edge in the Age of AI" to Eight Cities
Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart, Turin, Madrid, Lyon, London and Buenos Aires.
I didn't plan this tour on a map. I planned it around one question I've spent 25 years chasing:
What actually allows a human being to lead well, not perform well, lead well, when the world around them moves faster than the brain was ever designed to?
That question is the spine of Brain-Friendly Leader: The Human Edge in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, the book I've written with Juan Carlos Cubeiro and my daughter Relmi Damiano. And starting this tour, I realised the book itself needed to leave the page. Some ideas you can only test in a room, in real time, in front of people who are quietly exhausted and too polite to say so.
Why This Book Tour
Every leadership conversation I'm having right now, in boardrooms, in coaching sessions, in the practitioner network I've built across five continents circles back to the same fear dressed up in different words...
Am I still needed?
Am I thinking, or just reacting?
Have I forgotten how to have an original idea?
AI didn't create that fear. It exposed it. For years, leadership development focused almost entirely on behaviour, do this, say that, run your meetings this way.
It worked, a little, for a while. But behaviour is the surface.
Underneath it is a set of neural and physiological conditions that determines whether a leader can actually access clarity, imagination and good judgement when the pressure is highest. That's what the i4 Neuroleader™ Model was built to address, and it's what this book puts into language.
So this tour isn't a book promotion in the traditional sense. It's a live test of an idea: that the future won't split people into those who use AI and those who don't. It will split them into those who can still think and those who've forgotten how.
And wherever the schedule allows it, I won't be doing this alone. Relmi and Juan Carlos are two of the three voices in this book and this tour is at its best when it's the three of us in a room together.
The Four Threads That Run Through Every Stop
The question "What does a brain-friendly leader look like?" has a different answer in Sydney than it does in Madrid, but four capacities anchor every conversation on this book tour:
- Integration — why alignment between mind, body and heart isn't a soft skill, but a trainable capacity that determines whether a leader can stay lucid under pressure instead of fragmenting.
- Inspiration — the quiet kind, not the stage kind. The book calls it the ability to generate energy, meaning and direction without forcing it, and to transmit that state so it activates something in others. That's not charisma. That's neuroscience.
- Imagination — what gets freed up when a leader stops burning their best cognitive energy on tasks that don't need a human brain at all and starts protecting time to actually think.
- Intuition — reframed not as guessing, but as embodied intelligence: pattern recognition built from lived experience, picking up signals we often dismiss before we've consciously understood them.
I'll be adapting the emphasis at each stop based on who's in the room, executives in Sydney and London will hear a different opening than practitioners in Turin or Buenos Aires but the throughline stays: Cognitive sovereignty and what leadership looks like once we’ve automated the work that no longer requires uniquely human capabilities.
Different Cities, Different Leadership Habits Worth Naming
- Australia (Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart): a culture known for its resilience, practical leadership, stoicism and “just get on with it” instinct, providing the perfect backdrop for exploring how neuroscience helps leaders thrive without losing their humanity.
- Turin: where craftsmanship, excellence and thoughtful innovation remain deeply valued, yet where the pursuit of perfection can sometimes leave too little room for experimentation, curiosity and bold imagination.
- Lyon: home to one of Europe’s leading ecosystems for science, health and innovation, where evidence is rightly prized, while also inviting a conversation about balancing analysis with intuition and human judgement.
- Madrid: where human connection, energy and collaboration are central to leadership, while exploring how strong relationships can be paired with the clarity and courage to make difficult decisions when they matter most.
- London: a global centre for behavioural leadership frameworks, competency models and executive development, while exploring what happens when we shift our attention from managing behaviour to understanding the human system that drives it.
- Buenos Aires: renowned for its warmth, creativity and relational intelligence, while reflecting on how emotional intelligence becomes even more powerful when combined with greater self regulation and cognitive clarity.
What I Want Every City to Walk Away With
Not a framework to memorise. A question to sit with:
What allows me to function well enough to lead?
Not perform. Not perform faster than the machine. Function; as a regulated, integrated, inspirational, imaginative and intuitive human being.
If you're in Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart, Turin, Madrid, Lyon, London or Buenos Aires while I'm there, come and ask me the hard version of that question. Check out the calendar of events in our book page here.
Looking forward to seeing you in any of these wonderful cities.
Book Now Available
Brain Friendly Leader: The Human Edge in the Age of AI is now available worldwide in English, with paperback and eBook editions on our website. Spanish, Italian and French editions are coming soon.
Ordering directly from our website supports the authors, our ongoing research and educational work. The book will also be available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo and selected independent bookstores worldwide.
