Inspire your audience
Inspire your audience with our FORBES-praised tools & Cambridge University endorsed insights, to create powerful impact returns, and a strong, authentic, competitive edge.
"Dr van de Velde's research is outstanding and a worthy winner of the Adam Smith Prize for PhD Excellence"
Research Director
Centre for Social Innovation
Cambridge University
Keynote & workshops
​How can you invest effectively in a better future?
Why do some create a 200 to 400% better impact return than others?
And create a stronger advantages compared to most?​
Dr van de Velde will take your audience on a profound journey, crystalising the direction for powerful next steps towards a genuinely better future.
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Sustainability initiatives vary widely in both their success rates in tackling our global issues, and the competitive advantages they deliver. Given the enormity of the global challenges we face, it is vital that we invest our limited time and resources as effectively as possible in making a difference.
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Empower your audience with thought-leading insights as to how they can create more powerful results, based on award-winning research. Be inspired by global best practise examples that showcase how sustainability can create both strong business value, as well as a better world.​
Set your event apart with action-driven outcomes across the sustainability spectrum
Many events leave participants feeling they had a great time, but wonder if it ultimately made a significant difference to our future. Set your event apart with our FORBES-praised tools and Cambridge University endorsed insights, empowering your participants to reflect on their strengths and opportunities to create more powerful impact, and a strong competitive edge.
Many sustainability events understandably focus predominantly on climate change, but miss an opportunity to consider the wider challenges it relates to, and that play a significant role in how dark or bright our future will be. Enable your participants to consider four key opportunity areas to tackle our global goals at its root, and create a far better future than the one we are currently headed toward.
Workshop
River Challenge
Up your impact returns across the global goals
Why do some sustainability initiatives achieve a 200-400% better impact return compared to most?
Discover what drives the superior outcomes of global best practices in tackling some of the biggest issues we are facing as humanity.
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Use our thought-leading tools and insights to reflect on your strengths and opportunities to address our key global issues systematically, upstream, for lasting outcomes.
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Explore how you can help tackle climate change most powerfully, as well as related, wider challenges that significantly impact the brightness of our future, such as the plastics crisis, pollution, health and wellbeing, poverty, rising extremism and division.
Workshop
The Edge
Sustainability as a powerful competitive edge
Sustainability can lead to substantial benefits, driving revenue growth, brand value, productivity, and resilience.
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But sustainability efforts by different companies show a huge variety in the extent of the advantages gained, as well as the impact on our future.
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Discover five key factors as to why some global best practices create stronger impact returns, and gain far more significant business value compared to most.
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Reflect on your current competitive advantages, and how you can turn your efforts into a far more significant, authentic, competitive edge.
Workshop
Lead Like a Genius
Sustainability:
The final destination
​What is the end game of sustainability? And how can you take powerful next steps towards this destination?
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As for any ship that sets sail, understanding the final coordinates provides clear guidance for an effective journey towards its destination.
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Discover the essence as to why global best practices achieve stronger impact returns as well as financial outcomes.
Explore how by 'leading like a genius' you can create better impact returns, as well as strong commercial results, and achieve the ultimate balance between profits and purpose in a free market economy.
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Speaker Bio
​Melanie van de Velde, MSc, MBA, PhD
Melanie is a Global Goals expert, recognized for her groundbreaking research on overcoming global challenges. Her research was awarded the Adam Smith Prize for PhD Excellence, nominated by the Social Innovation Research Director at Cambridge University. Her book LEAD LIKE A GENIUS: How to Outgrow the Competition and Transform Our World was praised by FORBES Books as “a powerhouse for sustainable growth.”
After empowering young women in a Nairobi slum and leading global markets for a tech giant, Melanie now supports those who want to create powerful change. She is the founder of the Global Goals Masters and the Global Goals Podcast Show, providing an exciting experience that addresses not only the climate crisis but the full spectrum of global issues—for lasting change and an authentic edge.
TEDxVUAmsterdam | April 2025
​YOU ARE BATMAN: The 3 choices that shape your future
I had the pleasure of listening to Melanie opening the 1st international ESG city conference, held in Brazil.
Without a doubt, this was the highlight of the event.
Exceptional experience and technique and a didactic that kept everyone engaged.
Marcus Maida
Lawyer and Business Consultant
Brazil
Testimonials
Inspirational.
Melanie’s MPACT Wheel simplifies this immensely complex topic that we want to tackle together.
It really helped to structure our thinking and which areas of the wheel we want to focus on.
Jules Prick
Co-Founder Koos Service Design
The Netherlands
The experience will have a profound impact on my life.
Since I started my MBA, I have been thinking a lot about ESG and sustainability. Despite its popularity, I have found it lacking in depth or workable solutions. Your insights opened my eyes and has not only deepened my understanding of sustainability but also provided me with a clearer direction and inspiration to make a positive difference in the world.
Yue Shue
Executive MBA student Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow
China
Way more insightful than what you get elsewhere.
Jamie Davidson
Director
Johnston Carmichael
UK
Inspirational.
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Bee Lin Chow
Head of Asia Energy Analytics ICIS RELX
Singapore
Amazing insights, this is the need of the hour.
Inir Pinheiro
Founder & CEO
Grassroutes
India
I came home bouncing after the sessions.
The UN SDGs used to feel overwhelming. Now they feel comfortable, and I can't wait to tackle them.
Merlijn Mazairac
CEO & Founder The Rookie Minds
The Netherlands
Finally, a tool to help identify effective impact initiatives.
The imperative to make a positive impact and deliver profits may seem paradoxical, but it is possible. Melanie has solved this with her simple, easy-to-adopt methodology to help businesses create powerful social and environmental impact strategies.
Mark Fallows
Founder Fabrica Collective & The Impossible Network
US
