A keynote that changes what the audience believes — not just what they know.
Most keynotes inform. This one reframes.
Your audience arrives with a working understanding of sustainability, circularity, and how their organization makes decisions. They leave with that understanding rebuilt — and with a question that keeps working long after the applause:
What had to be assumed for that answer to be true?
The lead talk: Forty years after Brundtland.
In 1987, the Brundtland Commission published Our Common Future — the report that gave the world the language of sustainable development. Forty years later, Ken Alston delivers the retrospective no one else can: four decades inside the work, from one of the first corporate sustainability departments at SC Johnson to seventeen years alongside William McDonough and Michael Braungart.
Our Common Future Now is a 40-year inquiry into a single question: why do intelligent organizations keep creating outcomes they never intended?
The talk resets the foundations — what sustainability actually is, what circularity is not, and the missing layer beneath every strategy, framework, and decision: the beliefs and assumptions nobody examined. Then it turns forward: what happens when AI begins accelerating the wrong assumptions, and what comes next.
Also available:
Perfectly Wrong — AI is becoming exceptionally good at producing confident conclusions from unexamined assumptions. This talk is about the new risk inside every AI-supported decision — and the question that exposes it.
The belief-gap keynote — why intelligent organizations keep getting sustainability wrong, and the ceiling that no instrument, however rigorous, has broken through.
All keynotes run 45–60 minutes with Q&A. Delivered in English. International engagements welcome.
Speaking fees start at $10,000 plus travel and expenses. Enquire for availability and a quote.
I’m the next call — after realizing the transformation program didn’t transform.
Don’t buy an hour on stage. Buy your company’s public signal.
The most valuable keynote engagement I ever worked on was never a boardroom talk.
A CEO asked my boss, William McDonough, for a “head-twisting” session for his executive team. I set the event up — and instead of an hour behind closed doors, we turned it into an evening event: the whole company invited, the local community welcomed, competitors in the room, the local press covering it. A leadership moment — not a lecture.
A five-figure fee disappeared inside a marketing budget. The company got press coverage, community goodwill, and a visible industry-leadership position — before the content even began.
If you’re planning an event, ask about the public-evening format. I was inside the one that proved it. It’s how a keynote becomes an initiative.
Workshops: two formats, both proven.
Design for a Sustainable Circular Economy. The workshop Ken does in his sleep. A keynote introduction followed by a product design exercise in teams of six to thirty-six — participants leave having designed something, not just discussed it. Half-day or full-day.
The morning-after gap session. The “execuitve head-twisting” format. The evening keynote, then a half-day executive session the next morning. What stayed with your leaders overnight goes on the whiteboard. Then your company’s own public sustainability page goes on the screen. The gap between what your leaders believe and what your company claims — visible in one room, in one morning. This is where direction gets reset.
Workshops are priced with the keynote or as standalone engagements — enquire for a quote.
Themes.
Current keynote and workshop themes include: Why Sustainability Produces So Much Activity — Yet So Little Transformation; The Sustainability Ceiling™; Design Like Nature™; Sustainable Circularity; Stewardship, Leadership and the Future of Business; and Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Sustainability.
Proof: from keynote to the best product launch in company history.
The evening keynote. The morning-after gap session. The chasm between what the executive team believed and what the company claimed. An advisor embedded in the next product team. The fastest, best-regarded launch in the company’s history. Then years of embedding the new direction into the company’s operating system — until every product ran through the new lens.
That’s the arc: keynote, gap revealed, direction reset, embed. It’s been working for twenty years.
Practicalities.
Ken speaks to audiences of 50 to 1,000 and more — leadership teams, conferences, universities, and executive education programs. In person is preferred; virtual engagements by arrangement. Business travel is charged at cost, arranged or reimbursed. Booking lead time is typically six to twelve weeks, with limited dates each quarter.
Check availability for your event.
Tell us about your audience, your dates, and what you’re trying to shift. We’ll respond within two business days.