ES Global 2026

Join us for a fascinating interview with Opal Vadhan, Former Personal Aide to Vice President Kamala Harris and Executive Assistant to Secretary Hillary Clinton. Explore the unseen power of executive support at the highest levels of public service, as Opal Vadhan shares a rare insight into the critical role executive assistants play in leadership and diplomacy, as well as what it takes to support historic figures at pivotal moments. You do not want to miss this session!

The Value of Your Network is an empowering session designed specifically for PA’s and management Assistants who want to elevate their careers, strengthen their confidence, and build meaningful professional relationships. This session explores why networking is essential for today’s PA, offering practical tools to connect, collaborate and grow within your organization and the broader global PA community.

Participants will discover different networking styles, and learn how strong internal networks drive shared knowledge, improved productivity, and collective success. The session also highlights how to establish or rejuvenate an internal assistant network, create initiatives, and actively contribute to a thriving PA community.

By the end of the session, delegates will walk away with renewed confidence, a broader network, actionable strategies for LinkedIn and in‑person networking, and an understanding of how collaboration enhances creativity, efficiency, and career growth.

This training is ideal for PAs who want to become connectors, knowledge sharers, goal-driven professionals, and true champions of their administrative community.

Executive Assistants create enormous value every day, yet much of that impact remains invisible, unmeasured, and therefore underestimated.

In this session, we’ll explore why measuring impact is the missing piece in the EA profession and how shifting from task-based thinking to outcome-based thinking can completely change career conversations with leaders, HR, and organisations.

Rather than focusing on “doing more,” this talk introduces a structured way of looking at EA work through the lens of value creation: time saved, risks reduced, priorities enabled, and decisions accelerated. You’ll learn how using simple frameworks and business language helps Executive Assistants articulate their contribution with greater confidence and clarity, without turning the role into something it’s not.

This session is designed to help Executive Assistants move from being perceived as reactive support to being recognised as intentional strategic partners, capable of translating their daily work into outcomes leaders understand and respect.
After this session, participants will be able to:
● Understand why EA impact is often undervalued, and how to change that narrative
● Shift from task-focused descriptions to outcome- and value-based conversations
● Apply a simple structure to identify and articulate their contribution in business language
● Approach career, performance, and development discussions with greater confidence and clarity

You may never step onto a stage, but you ARE presenting every single day.

When you speak in a meeting, brief your executive, navigate a difficult conversation, or advocate for an idea, you are presenting. And the skills that make someone effective on a stage are the same skills that build credibility, trust, and leadership in one-on-one conversations.

This interactive session reframes presentation skills as a core leadership competency, not just reserved for the head of the boardroom or a keynote stage. Designed specifically for Administrative Professionals, this session breaks down communication into three practical phases that apply to any situation:

Pre-pare – how to organize your thoughts, clarify your message, and use simple storytelling structures (with or without slides)

Pre-form – what to do in the minutes before a high-stakes conversation to calm nerves, focus your energy, and show up with confidence

Per-form – how to communicate clearly and persuasively in the moment, whether you’re speaking to one person or many

Participants will learn how small shifts in preparation, presence, and delivery can dramatically improve how they’re perceived—without needing to be loud, polished, or “on stage.”

This session is not about becoming a “speaker.” It’s about becoming a confident communicator, a trusted advisor, and a visible leader—no podium required. By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Reframe everyday communication as leadership
2. Recognize that meetings, briefings, and one-on-one conversations are moments of presentation—and understand how intentional communication builds credibility, trust, and influence.
3. Prepare messages with clarity and purpose
4. Use simple, repeatable frameworks to organize thoughts, clarify intent, and tell concise stories—whether speaking with slides, without slides, or on the fly.

Regulate nerves and show up with confidence
Apply quick pre-conversation techniques to calm the nervous system, focus energy, and enter high-stakes interactions grounded and composed.

Communicate with presence and impact
Deliver ideas clearly and persuasively in real time, adapting tone, pacing, and presence to different audiences—without needing to be polished, performative, or “on stage.”

In many organisations, Executive Assistants operate without formal authority, yet carry significant responsibility. This session explores how EAs earn trust, authority, and confidence through consistent execution rather than titles or visibility.

Drawing from real-world experience in Singapore and regional environments, this talk reframes authority as something accumulated over time – through sound judgement, reliable follow-through, and steady behaviour under pressure.

This session is designed to help EAs think and operate at business level, understand how authority actually works in practice, and build confidence.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand how EAs earn authority and confidence through consistent execution rather than formal power or title
• Recognise how trust is built when EAs do what they say they will do, reliably and repeatedly
• Reflect on how judgement and follow through contribute to operating at business level

The Encore Years are not about slowing down or stepping aside. They are about intention, relevance, and choice. In this recorded session, Joan Burge reframes the Encore Years as a mindset for designing your career intentionally, regardless of age or stage.

Drawing from her Red Lipstick ON! philosophy and more than five decades in the workplace, Joan invites administrative professionals at every stage of their career to rethink how they define success, energy, and fulfillment. For long-time assistants, this session offers permission to reinvent, refocus, and lead with wisdom. For earlier-career professionals, it provides a clear roadmap for laying the groundwork now for future flexibility, confidence, and choice.

This session blends personal insight, practical guidance, and reflection across career, financial, wellness, and identity pillars. Attendees will leave with a deeper understanding that Encore Years are not an age or a title. They are a mindset that can be activated at any point in life.

Learning Objectives / Outcomes

Redefine the Encore Years as a mindset rooted in intention, relevance, and purpose rather than age, retirement, or job titles.

Identify the foundations being built today in career, financial well-being, wellness, and self-identity that directly shape future opportunities and choices.

Recognize the value of experience and energy and how both can be leveraged strategically at any stage of an administrative career.

Assess where they may be operating on autopilot and identify specific areas where greater intentionality can strengthen their long-term professional and personal trajectory.

Apply the Red Lipstick ON! mindset as a personal framework for courage, reinvention, and confident decision-making in their current season and beyond.

Administrative Professionals sit at the intersection of information, decision making and execution. Yet, their influence is often informal and underutilized.

This session reframes the administrative role as a strategic power center and explores how assistants can intentionally transform insight into influence and influence into measurable impact.

Grounded in mindset principles, organizational psychology and real-world practice, this session provides a practical framework for shaping decisions without formal authority, strengthening trust with executives and creating sustained organizational value.

Participants will leave with clear strategies and tools they can apply immediately to elevate their strategic presence and professional impact.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Reframe their mindset from task-based support to strategic influence.
2. Apply a practical framework to convert insight into influence and influence to impact.
3. Implement consistent habits that strengthen trust, judgement and organizational effectiveness.

Support professionals are uniquely positioned to drive real impact – but too often, they’re buried under reactive tasks, managing everyone else’s chaos while their own strategic thinking gets pushed aside. 

This keynote is for the EAs, PAs, VAs and administrative professionals who know they’re capable of more but feel stuck in execution mode – juggling urgent demands, managing competing priorities, and never quite finding space to step back and add the strategic value they know they could deliver. 

Drawing from lived experience with mental health challenges and years working with high-performing support professionals, Nick Elston delivers an honest, practical session on shifting from reactive to strategic, managing your workload without losing your mind, and positioning yourself as a trusted partner – not just a task manager. 

You’ll leave with real tools to protect your capacity for strategic thinking, challenge the narratives that keep you small, and create the space to add value at a higher level – without burning out in the process. 

This isn’t theory. It’s not corporate jargon. It’s real talk grounded in real experience – designed for the people who are ready to step up but need practical strategies to make it happen without drowning in the day-to-day. 

Learning Outcomes:

1.  Practical strategies to move from reactive task management to proactive strategic thinking – protecting capacity for high-value work while still managing urgent demands  

2.  How to position yourself as a strategic partner to your executive – building trust, demonstrating value, and creating opportunities to contribute at a higher level  

3.  Tools to manage workload, prioritise effectively, and create boundaries that protect your strategic capacity – so you can step up without burning out 

As a society, we’re often taught to avoid risk and focus on playing it “safe.” What we’re not taught is that some level of risk is necessary in order to progress forward, nor are we taught what this level is, how to gauge and leverage it for our own success, and the high personal cost of “playing it safe” – especially in today’s competitive environment.

In this program, you will explore your risk-tolerance level, discover the factors you will face when deciding to take risks, and learn principles to follow to achieve your goals and gain buy-in from others. Sandy shares her personal experience and the experiences of others who have escaped the trap of “playing it safe” to inspire you to think more creatively about the types and levels of risks you need to take.

Following this program, you will:

Recognize the absolute necessity and benefit of taking appropriate risks in business and life.

Identify and mentally prepare for the 4 factors you must fight when deciding to take risks.

Learn 5 valuable principles for taking risk, including steps to take to motivate yourself and how to gain buy-in from others whose help you may need/want.

Identify and eliminate the excuses you use to hold yourself back, and begin a plan to add more risk in your life to accomplish your goals.

Learn the importance of being a positive role model of high personal and professional performance.