KEYNOTE 2 · BRUSSELS · 22/10/26

👤 Antonina Panchenko (UA) is an L&D thought leader, Learning Experience Designer, and founder of KnowPack, a learning technology service that transforms expert knowledge into scalable digital learning experiences.

She holds a Master’s degree in Social Psychology and an MBA in General Management. With more than 15 years of experience in corporate learning, adult education, and consulting across Europe and Ukraine, Antonina has designed and led over 100 learning initiatives, reaching more than 50,000 learners.

Her background combines corporate L&D leadership at UKRSIBBANK BNP Paribas Group with international consulting experience at DEVELOR Ukraine. Today, she works with organisations, EdTech companies, experts, and providers of AI-powered authoring tools, focusing on human-centred learning design, scalable learning ecosystems, and meaningful behavioural change.

Following her forced migration to Germany due to the war in Ukraine, Antonina has continued to build her professional work across countries, cultures, and organisational contexts.

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🎤 LEARNING IN A GLOBAL VILLAGE

Learning & Development now operates in a truly international environment. Organisations work across borders, teams are becoming more diverse, and knowledge, expertise, and collaboration are increasingly accessible from anywhere. This changes more than the technologies and formats we use. It also changes how L&D professionals understand their own role and professional identity.

What happens when the geographical, organisational, or professional stability on which a career was built can no longer be taken for granted? And what becomes possible when access to people, knowledge, tools, and international collaboration is no longer limited by geography? Drawing on the Ukrainian experience of forced migration and subsequent international collaboration, Antonina explores how expertise and professional identity can be preserved, reconsidered, and further developed during periods of radical change.

The keynote examines how the Global Village is reshaping L&D: making professional mobility more common, bringing different perspectives and cultures into the design process, and creating new opportunities for collaboration and innovation. It is an invitation to rethink professional identity, stability, and the role of L&D in connecting people, cultures, and organisations in an increasingly open but less predictable world.

🎯 By the end of this presentation, participants:

• reflect on how professional identity changes when geographical and organisational stability can no longer be assumed.
• explore how open access to knowledge, technology, and international collaboration is reshaping the work of L&D professionals.
• reconsider professional identity beyond one country, organisation, role, or job title.
• understand how L&D and learning design can connect people, cultures, and organisations.
• reflect on their own readiness for professional mobility and unexpected change.

KEYNOTE 3 · BRUSSELS · 22/10/26

👤 Melanie Martinelli (CH) is an internationally recognised expert in learning transfer, learning effectiveness and evidence-based Learning & Development. She is the CEO of the Institute for Learning Transfer and has dedicated her career to helping organisations maximise the impact of learning.

Melanie combines scientific research with practical experience to identify the factors that determine whether people actually apply what they have learned in the workplace. Her work bridges the gap between learning interventions and measurable business results. Through consulting, research, publications and keynote presentations, she supports organisations worldwide in designing learning initiatives that create lasting behavioural change and improve performance. Her evidence-based approach has made her a respected voice within the international L&D community.

Her mission is simple: learning only creates value when it is transferred into everyday practice. Her work helps Learning & Development professionals move beyond delivering training towards creating measurable organisational impact.

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🎤 MAKING TRANSFER HAPPEN: THREE QUICK-AND-EASY TOOLS WITH GREAT IMPACT

If learning experts really want to design sustainable training, then it is unfortunately not enough to add some fun engagement activities, insert some nice pictures there, add some polls or whiteboard activities and nice animation, everything as simple and fast as possible. If you want sustained behaviour change, you must invest more: not necessarily money - but ideas and a transfer vision. So, let's do it right! And right does not mean to buy yet ANOTHER cool learning activity, facilitation tool, more technical features, or an additional content nugget.

In this interactive keynote, you will discover the 12 Levers of Transfer Effectiveness — the essence of 110 years of scientific research, distilled and curated by Dr. Ina Weinbauer-Heidel from the Institute for Transfer Effectiveness. These 12 levers are designed to help ensure that the insights gained in learning programs are effectively and sustainably applied in real-life contexts.

🎯Takeaways

• Receive a short overview of the 12 levers of transfer effectiveness
• Experience how to use them to identify transfer challenges & barriers in your training programs
• Discover three quick and easy tools to boost transfer

KEYNOTE 4 · BRUSSELS · 22/10/26

👤 Michael Gerlich (CH) Dr Michael Gerlich is a researcher, author and international keynote speaker whose work examines how artificial intelligence changes human thought, judgement and behaviour. He is the Founder and President of The Human Factor Association, a Swiss-based non-profit organisation dedicated to ensuring that human capabilities keep pace with technological progress.

His research on cognitive offloading, critical thinking and human-AI collaboration has attracted considerable international attention and has contributed to public debate about AI, education and the future of work. He is the author of The Convenience Trap: What Happens When AI Becomes the Mind Behind Our Lives and advises organisations and public institutions on responsible AI adoption, human agency and cognitive resilience.

His work has been featured in TIME, the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The Economist and other international media. Rather than asking only what AI can do, Michael focuses on the more consequential question: what must people and organisations remain capable of doing for themselves?

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🎤 WHEN AI STARTS THINKING FOR US: THE NEW RESPONSIBILITY OF L&D

Artificial intelligence can help people learn faster, overcome barriers, access expertise and produce work of remarkable quality. Yet its greatest strength also creates its most important risk: AI can remove precisely the cognitive effort through which people develop knowledge, judgement and capability.

When learners delegate research, interpretation, problem formulation and reflection to AI, they may produce better outputs without necessarily becoming more capable. Fluent answers can conceal shallow understanding. Immediate assistance can reduce curiosity, independent reasoning and the willingness to remain with a difficult problem. For Learning & Development, this creates a fundamental challenge. It is no longer sufficient to teach employees how to use AI. L&D must also determine how people can use it without gradually surrendering the capabilities that organisations will continue to need.

Based on his research and advisory experience in cognitive offloading, critical thinking, and structured human-AI collaboration, Michael examines the conditions under which AI strengthens human performance and those under which it begins to replace human thought. He challenges the assumption that faster completion necessarily represents better learning and explains why the quality of an AI-generated result cannot serve as evidence of human capability. The keynote presents a constructive alternative to both uncritical adoption and technological resistance. AI can serve as a tutor, challenger, simulator, translator and thought partner, provided that learning experiences preserve human ownership of the essential cognitive work. Michael introduces the concept of productive friction and shows how carefully designed moments of effort, uncertainty, reflection and independent judgement can strengthen rather than obstruct learning.

The central question is therefore not whether L&D should embrace AI. It is how L&D can design human-AI collaboration so that technology extends human capability rather than quietly replacing it.

🎯Takeaways

• Participants will understand why high-quality AI-supported outputs do not necessarily indicate genuine learning or independent human capability.
• They will learn to distinguish between cognitive support, which helps people think, and cognitive substitution, which allows technology to think on their behalf.
• They will gain practical principles for the design of learning experiences that use AI as a tutor, challenger, simulator and thought partner while preserving productive friction, reflection and human judgement.
• They will be able to identify the moments within learning and work where AI assistance creates value, as well as the moments where people must begin, reason, decide or evaluate for themselves.
• They will leave with a broader understanding of L&D's emerging responsibility: not only to accelerate learning, but to protect and develop the human capabilities upon which organisational adaptability, innovation and responsible decision-making depend.

KEYNOTE 5 · BRUSSELS · 22/10/26

👤 Daria Zadniprovska (UA) is a Ukrainian entrepreneur, learning innovator and internationally recognised expert in Learning & Development. As founder and CEO of LMS Collaborator, she helps organisations build modern learning ecosystems that support employee development, knowledge sharing and organisational resilience.

Working from a country affected by war, Daria has experienced first-hand how learning, adaptability and innovation become essential when uncertainty is part of everyday life. Her work demonstrates how organisations can continue to grow, collaborate and develop even under the most challenging circumstances.

Daria is a frequent international keynote speaker and a passionate advocate of continuous learning, growth mindset and organisational transformation. She combines practical business experience with inspiring personal stories, showing how people can remain resilient and future-focused during periods of constant change.

Her unique perspective reminds Learning & Development professionals that learning is not only about acquiring new knowledge, but also about developing the mindset and resilience needed to navigate uncertainty and build stronger organisations.

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🎤A GROWTH MINDSET IN TIMES OF WAR

Keynote description coming soon

🎯Takeaways

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KEYNOTE 6 · BRUSSELS · 22/10/26

👤 JD Dillon (US) is a frontline enablement expert, author, speaker, technologist, and founder of Every Shift Counts, a global movement dedicated to advancing frontline performance. With more than 25 years of experience spanning operations, training, talent development, and marketing, he brings a practical perspective on building capable, confident teams shaped by his work in leadership roles with Disney, Kaplan, and AMC.

JD is the bestselling author of The Frontline Enablement Playbook and The Modern Learning Ecosystem, where he challenges traditional approaches to workplace learning and advocates for a performance-first mindset. A sought-after keynote speaker on the global stage, JD is known for delivering engaging, evidence-based presentations that help organizations rethink workplace learning, frontline performance, and the future of work.

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🎤 A FUTURE WITHOUT L&D?

For decades, Learning & Development has struggled to clearly define its value. Too often, we've measured success by courses completed instead of business outcomes achieved, leaving stakeholders to question where L&D fits within the organization.

Now, AI is accelerating a new wave of workplace transformation. As organizations look to intelligent tools to answer questions, build content, and enable performance, they're asking an even bigger question: Do we need an L&D function at all?

Join JD Dillon to explore why this moment is both the greatest challenge and opportunity our profession has ever faced. We'll examine how the workplace is changing, why defending traditional approaches won't secure our future, and how L&D can evolve into the function that powers the future of work. Spoiler: it's never been about learning.

🎯 Takeaways

• Adopt a new L&D mindset that reflects the realities of today's workplace
• Shift the conversation with stakeholders from learning to workforce readiness
• Embrace a systems approach to enablement that extends beyond traditional training and development
• Identify practical ways to evolve the role of L&D before others define our future