Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva
Founder and Chief Reinvention Officer, The Reinvention AcademyInVentures magazine calls her “The Reinvention Guru.” TEDxNavesink calls her “The Queen of Reinvention.” Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva is a scientist, business theorist, fractional mining executive, serial entrepreneur, and award-winning author specializing in resilience and reinvention.
As a consultant and an educator, Dr. Nadya has worked with Fortune 500 and global leaders such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Coca-Cola, IBM, Cisco, L’Oréal Group, Danone, Kohler, Erste Bank, Henkel, Knauf Insulation, and Vienna Insurance Group—helping them reinvent products, leadership practices, and business models to stay relevant in turbulent times.
A former Coca-Cola Chaired Professor of Sustainable Development at IEDC-Bled School of Management in Slovenia, she has taught leadership, strategy, innovation, and change at top business schools around the world, including Case Western Reserve University (USA), IPADE (Mexico), and CEDEP (France), where she also served on the Advisory Board.
As a speaker, she has delivered four TEDx talks across Europe and the US and appeared on hundreds of stages worldwide—from intimate boardrooms to audiences of 5,000+—blending science, storytelling, and hands-on exercises that make her keynotes both inspiring and practical. In 2024, she co-founded the Reinvention Summit, bringing together leading thinkers in strategy, innovation, and transformation.
From 2012, she has also served as a fractional equivalent of a Chief Transformation Officer for the Eurasian Resources Group, a leading global metals and mining company with nearly 67,000 employees across Kazakhstan, Africa, and Brazil.
Dr. Nadya is the author of several acclaimed books, including Embedded Sustainability: The Next Big Competitive Advantage (named one of the “Best Sustainability Books of All Time”), Overfished Ocean Strategy: Powering Up Innovation for a Resource-Deprived World (Soundview’s Best Book of 2014), and the international bestseller The Chief Reinvention Officer Handbook: How to Thrive in Chaos—winner of the Axiom Business Book Award and the prestigious Kirkus Star for exceptional merit.
A regular contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review, her insights have been featured in media outlets worldwide. She earned her PhD in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, where she also served as Associate Director at the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit (now the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value).