Out of more than 35 featured presenters at IIL’s global virtual conference, these 21 women are bringing some of the sharpest thinking on AI, leadership, and resilience to the virtual stage this year.
21 Women Presenters · 30+ Total Speakers · 3 Learning Tracks · November 5, 2026, Live Day
For 22 years IPM Day has been about the people who make the impossible look routine. This year, a big share of that talent is women leading live and on-demand sessions on Project and Program Management, Artificial Intelligence, resilience, and what great leadership looks like in practice. Here is the lineup.
Keynote Presenters
Giovana Cury Pagliuca, Program Implementation Manager, Generation · 2025 Kerzner Award Winner
Giovana opens the second live day keynote slot with a session built on a deliberately uncomfortable premise: “How to Set Your Team Up for Failure (So They Can Succeed).” As a Kerzner Award winner, she has spent her career proving that the fastest route to a high-performing team runs straight through the moments where things fall apart on purpose, safely, and early.
Dr. Elissa Farrow, Futurist and Transformation Specialist
Dr. Farrow takes the 1:30 PM EDT keynote slot with “Leading from Every Seat: Co-Design, Followership and Project Delivery,” a direct challenge to the idea that leadership only happens at the top of an org chart. She also teaches one of the two free courses included with registration, Innovation and Design Thinking Beyond the Obvious, so attendees get her thinking twice over.
Joti Balani, Founder & CEO, Freshriver.ai
Projects in Motion: The Track Where Governance Gets Real
Dr. Tricia Diamond, Owner, Diamond PMO Solutions
“From Second Line to Agile: What Jazz Funerals Teach Us About Adaptive Teams” is not a session title you scroll past. Dr. Diamond draws on New Orleans jazz funeral tradition, grief turned into procession, sorrow turned into rhythm, to make a case for how teams adapt under pressure.
Karen Johnson-Susko, VP Operational Excellence, Supply Chain, Veolia Water-Tech
Karen brings Lean Six Sigma out of the textbook and into a real supply chain, showing how rigor and engagement transform operations that keep water moving.
Erica Mohre, Information Services Strategy and OCM Program Director, Nationwide Children's Hospital
Erica is doing double duty this year with two on-demand sessions: “Project Prenup: Practical Governance Principles,” a framework for setting expectations before a project can go sideways, and the irresistibly titled “Broccoli Topics: Organizational Change Management (OCM) for Toddlers,” which uses parenting logic to explain why change management so often meets resistance.
Sabrina Poteat, Founder and Principal Consultant, Applied Edge Consulting
“Why PMOs Fail, and How to Build One That Delivers Value” is exactly the on-demand session every PMO leader wishes someone had handed them on day one. Sandra built her consultancy around fixing exactly this problem.
Lucy Hornsby, Facilitator, Group Coach, Change Consultant, Light Spark Group
Lucy’s session, “Change Management is Lying to You (and So Am I, a Bit),” is the kind of self-aware honesty the field needs more of. She is calling out the industry’s comfortable myths from the inside.
AI Impacts: A Track Women Are Quietly Running
Sarbaja Adhikari, Product Manager, Author, Youth Voices of Change
Carine Ghosn, Business Solution Associate Director and Course Lecturer, McGill University
“From Reactive to Predictive: How AI Is Reinventing PMO” makes the case that the PMO’s whole value proposition is shifting, from reporting on what happened to forecasting what is about to.
Parul Gupta, Senior AI and Data Officer, PVR INOX
Parul introduces the AI Impact Assessment, a practical framework for evaluating agentic workflows before they are deployed, not after something breaks.
Alicia Morgan, Project Management Consultant and AI Coach
Debra Kahn, CEO and Principal Consultant, DK Consulting of Colorado
“Closing the Trust Gap: Communicating Project Decisions in an AI-Influenced World” tackles the question stakeholders are already asking: how do I trust a decision I know a machine helped make?
The Human of It All: Where Leadership Gets Personal
Natalie Berkiw-Scenna, Founder, Project Management Life
“Sustainable Performance for Project Leaders: Driving Results Without Burnout” is the session this industry has needed for years. Berkiw-Scenna makes the case that burnout is not a personal failing, it is a process failure.
Dr. Tresia Eaves, Director, Enterprise Applications, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
“Wisdom and Project Managers” is a deceptively simple title for a session about the difference between knowing a methodology and knowing when to break from it.
Bobbi Harte, Senior Manager, Front End Innovation, Altria
Bobbi’s on-demand session on Trust-Driven Project Leadership connects the dots between psychological safety and hard business outcomes: faster decisions, less rework, more innovation.
Nicole Petite, CEO, ProjIT Solutions
“Resilient Leadership: Guiding Teams Through Change and Chaos” comes from someone who is built a company on doing exactly that.
Shannon Leppky, M.Ed, President & Founder, Red Chair Coaching & Leadership Academy
“Who You Are Matters: It’s Not Just About the Methodology” pushes back against the idea that certifications alone make a great project leader.
Jorgelina Bross-Puglisi, Trainer and Consultant, IIL
Jorgelina asks, “Do Humans Still Need Humans?” in her change management 2.0 session, and teaches the second free course included with registration, Becoming an Effective Servant Leader.
Graziella Borg, Associate Director, R&D PMO, Healthcare Organization
“The True Power of Progressing into Impactful Leadership” closes out the track with a session for anyone figuring out what impact looks like from the inside of a large organization.
Frequently Asked Questions
International Project Management Day is IIL's 22nd annual global virtual conference. It runs live on November 5, 2026, with the theme, Purpose, Progress, and Power. The content are available on demand for 90 days, through February 7, 2027.
Giovana Cury Pagliuca, Dr. Elissa Farrow, and Joti Balani (co-presenting the closing keynote) headline the live keynote stage.
Registration is open now at iil.com/international-project-management-day
The live day keynote presenters will present on November 5, 2026. It is not required that you attend the live day to experience all that IPM Day has to offer. You will have on-demand access to live day keynotes and on-demand presentations through February 7, 2027.
International Project Management Day 2026 goes live on Thursday, November 5! Register here.
